Letting Go II

I am in the Everyday Zen 60 day practice period, a time in which I will intensify my practice.  For this practice period I am contemplating letting go, faith, and gratitude.

What does it mean “to let go” anyway?  I use the phrase; everybody uses the phrase as if we actually know what it means.  It cannot mean to let go, as if you were clinging to a tree branch and you just let go and dropped to the ground.  In life it is not so clear or simple, or, perhaps, even do-able.  How do you let go of life-long habits or ways of viewing yourself? How do you let go of adult children?  Not possible – and may not even be desirable – in the case of your children.

Somehow we feel if we let go, we won’t suffer.  The Buddha’s enlightenment came about when he realized that desire is the source of suffering.  So what do I desire, fundamentally, at the heart of things?  I desire for things to be not as they are.  I desire to have perfect health.  I desire to have my child do as I want him to do.  I desire that Fox News stop broadcasting lies and perverting whatever national intelligence that we have left.

I desire to hold on to what I love and avoid that which causes me pain. 

What if I could see life as a giant popcorn-maker?  “What a beautiful sunset!” Pop – it’s gone.  “What a hurtful comment.”  Pop – it’s gone.  “Wow! I just got a big tax return.” Pop – it’s gone.  Maybe it comes down to accepting each beautiful moment of your life as a gift, and then letting go.  Accepting the grief or loss in this moment, and then letting go.

Maybe the intention to live freely, spontaneously and joyfully is like the impossibility of the Bodhisattva vows that we chant:

Beings are numberless, I vow to save them.

Delusions are inexhaustible, I vow to end them.

Dharma gates are boundless, I vow to enter them.

Buddha’s way is unsurpassable, I vow to become it.

We know this is not only impossible but absurd.  But we vow to do it anyway.

Maybe the prescription to let go of every moment is impossible, but we are determined to do it anyway.    Or, at least, we can practice it over and over again.

Letting go

The DOW – my retirement funds – dropped 470 points amid economic gloom.  My son might become active status Marines and deploy to Afghanistan, just when we thought he was safe.

Hundreds of thousands of African children are dying of starvation.  And last, and least, I realize that I am aging, because my skin is breaking and bruising easily!

So we are anxious.  We have some kind of magical thinking that we can control these things.  “If I scoff at right wing nut cases like Rick Perry or Sarah Palin, they will go away.  If I just wait long enough, stocks will go up again.  If I hope hard enough, my son won’t deploy. If I stay out of the sun, my skin won’t age.”

I want to let go!  This is driving me crazy! 

The Serenity Prayer has a long history of being inspirational:

God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference.

But I wonder about the part, “courage to change the things I can.”  Can we actually change anything?   We see the ever-changing mountain stream, and we intuitively know that our lives are like this.  In this immense net of the world, where things are changing moment to moment, where everything is impermanent, how could we actually change any one thing? 

On the other hand, if we and nature are intimately interconnected, maybe our right action, our right words, and our compassion could change everything – all the time, even if it is on a microscopic, imperceptible basis. 

So that gets me to the “wisdom to know the difference.”  What is the difference between that which we can change and that which we cannot?  That might be what the Buddhists call Wisdom Beyond Wisdom, Mahaprajnaparamita – the wisdom that we are not separate.  That there is no one thing.

There is a prayer from the elders of the Hopi nation, which in a deep heart way, answers me:

                                               The elders say that we must let go of the shore.  

Push off into the middle of the river,

And keep our heads above water.

and I say see who is there with you

And celebrate.

The Worry Gene

I recently read news about an “optimist” gene.  I clearly don’t have that gene.  In fact, I am certain that there is a “worry” gene, and I inherited it from both parents! 

Now that I am retired, it would seem that I have about the most perfect life possible.  It is like standing on a mountain peak and looking off into space: all that free time!  And yet I am anxious about finances and the stock market falling and the debt ceiling – most of which I have no control over whatsoever.

My husband is younger than me and is the wage earner now.  I call him my “retirement plan.”  My last two weeks at work he sent me the sound file of Bob Marley’s song, “Don’t worry ‘bout a thing.  Every little thing is gonna be all right.”   

Every spiritual tradition says we should not worry about our material existence.  We should place our trust in Buddha or God.  Or both!  The early Buddhists walked with a begging bowl, not knowing when their next meal would be. 

So I sit every morning in the Montara Mountain zendo.  I focus on trying to let go.  Let go of financial worry, concerns about my son.  Let go of unwanted attachments. Is it even possible to “try” to do this?

I think that when we really meditate on impermanence, it might indeed be possible.   What is there to hold on to anyway?  What is under our control, when everything is changing so fast, moment to moment?

I think that in our heart of hearts, we do believe that “Every little thing is gonna be all right.”  Maybe it is the practice of gratitude and appreciation for what there already is, and renunciation of all that which hasn’t even happened yet.

Blood pressure, protection, and the Buddha’s robe

Back in the late seventies, when I was travelling with Baba Muktananda, it was customary for the devotees to ask for a “spiritual name.”  Initially Baba would come up with a name on the spot as the person kneeled before him, but as the crowds got too large, he handed the person a card with a name on it.  Although the process seemed impersonal to me, I nevertheless asked for a name.  Baba read the card, said “Ahhh,” and handed it to me.  My name was Rakshā, meaning “protection.”

Within that tradition the Guru is seen as one who protects the devotee.  And “mantra” means “that which protects the mind” – which is pretty cool actually.

Now that I no longer practice that yoga, and I practice Zen, I take refuge and protection in the Buddha, the dharma [the teachings], and the sangha [the community of practitioners].  I especially like to visualize the buddha robe, the “okesa” that is worn over the shoulder of a Buddhist priest or monk, as a sacred object.  Being [probably over the top] devotional, I love to imagine bowing to my teacher’s okesa.

The last few days I have been freaked out over my blood pressure.  Every time I see the insouciant expression “meditation lowers blood pressure,” I think, “Yeah, right.”  I meditate daily, but my blood pressure is all over the map.  For the last week or so, my blood pressure readings have been really high, at around 160/115.  Are these real numbers? I had developed so much anxiety around this that I couldn’t get a real blood pressure measurement because I was so anxious.

So I sat in the nurse’s office.  She took my pressure – 155/109 – and told me to relax.  She said that she would return later and would take it again.  I don’t think you can tell someone to relax. But I imagined an okesa.  I imagined being enveloped in the protection of the okesa.  Minute after minute, I took refuge in the okesa. When she returned my blood pressure had dropped to 130/85!

There is a mystery here concerning the nature of protection, devotion, and faith.  I think that no matter what the object of devotion – the guru, the Holy Mother, or an okesa – the important thing is the devotional act of seeking refuge or protection with all your heart. 

It is open-ended prayer, devotion, and faith.  Faith in “…” with no predicate.  Praying for protection – as an act independent of the object of devotion – is that which protects.

Dogen's Cypress Tree

I.

“Why did Bodhidharma come from the west” is studied by all the buddhas,

but cannot be answered by the buddhas.

What object could ever answer my question?

What intention, what thought?

One cannot say “This is it.”

And yet old master Zhaozhou points to the cypress tree in the garden.

The monk is unsatisfied, saying “don’t show this person an object,”

but he is not admonished, because he, his question, the master,

and the cypress tree are all echoes from emptiness.

We do not make a pilgrimage to an ancestral shrine.

We bury the shrine and study this together.

II.

“The cypress tree becomes a buddha

when space falls to the ground,

and space falls to the ground,

when the cypress tree becomes a buddha.”

This is not a matter of mutual dependence

or circular thinking.

This is not a matter of time or space

or becoming.

This is not a matter of “once it wasn’t but now it is.”

A cypress tree does not practice to become what it is.

Buddha nature is not a seed within the cypress tree

that one day will be expressed when the time is right.

And yet, old master Zhaouzhou sees the space that exceeds

a hundred thousand claps of thunder

and a time not yet measured,

where we become buddhas together.

Yanguan’s “Rhinoceros Fan”

One day Yanguan called to his attendant, “Bring me the rhinoceros fan.”

The attendant said, “The fan is broken.”

Yanguan said, “If the fan is broken, then bring me the rhinoceros [buddha-nature].”

The attendant had no reply.

Zifu drew a circle and wrote the word ‘rhino’ inside it.

For many, many years, whenever I heard someone say that “Everything is perfect,” it used to really piss me off.  Obviously everything is not perfect: there is suffering and starvation and molestation and war and the ongoing destruction of our planet.

So I was really interested in my negative reaction to my teacher’s commentary on this koan, in which he said that “Everything is already broken,” because it has occurred to me lately that everything – in a way – is actually perfect. 

Often meditation instructions include visualizing one’s thoughts as clouds coming and going against an infinite, blue sky.  And, actually, thoughts are like clouds.  They are instantaneous neurochemical connections.  They have no innate, substantial being.  They are events, not things.

Other than frank, physical pain, how could we find the location of “thing-ness” or suffering or brokenness? There has been, of course, suffering in each of our lives, but where is it now?  Now – in this moment – it is just an idea, insubstantial, changing, and, in a sense, unreal.

Yesterday I went to our zendo in Pacifica.  The morning was bright and full of birdsong.

I sat and composed this little verse:

On this radiantly beautiful morning,

Sitting in the cool zendo,

I simply cannot find brokenness.

So just as the attendant in the rhinoceros fan koan could not bring the broken fan, maybe we cannot “bring” our brokenness into this instant moment.

Wow!  What joy and freedom in that!

Nothing Holy

In case two in the Book of Serenity, Emperor Wu asks Great Teacher Bodhidharma,

“What is the meaning of the holy truths?”

Bodhidharma said, “Empty – there is no holy.”

The emperor said, “Who are you facing me?”

Bodhidharma said, “Don’t know.”

The emperor did not understand, and Bodhidharma went to Shaolin, where he faced a wall [did zazen] for nine years.

Now that I am retired and my life has opened up spacious time, I consider what I am doing.  I want everything “to count” in some way.  I have been considering doing nothing.  What would happen if I just stopped?  If I just sat zazen or just sat in my chair all day gazing at the ocean?  I think that if I dropped all my projects and just sat, maybe something new would unfold and reveal itself to me.  So I decided to try to do this.

So far I have not been able to sit for very long, but I have my justifications: I have to floss, shop, cook, sleep, eat.  So I will put these activities in the category of “I have to do this, so it doesn’t count against my objective of doing nothing.”

Then there are some work related activities that I have to do and want to do:  study math for my upcoming tutoring classes; do work for Everyday Zen.  So that doesn’t mean I have made some kind of detour from doing nothing, because it is “important” work.

I am sitting (on and off the cushion) about three hours a day.  So that constitutes the holy.  Zazen – facing the wall on my cushion – qualifies as meaningful activity.

But my puppy reminded me that “there is no holy.”  She deposited a neat, discrete turd on top of my meditation cushion.  Thank you puppy!!

So, while some activities seem more holy, more meaningful, this may not be the case.  Maybe everything is holy, and, therefore, nothing is (separately) holy.  But still, it seems to me that I could perform all actions with the attitude that everything is holy.

Maybe this is possible.  Maybe not.