A monk asked, “How should one act during every moment of every day
such that the ancestors are not betrayed?”Yunmen said, “Give up your effort.”
The monk said, “How should I give up my effort?”
Yunmen said, “Give up the words you just uttered.”
Here we are, gathered together on this new day, beginning once more to investigate the great matter. Beginning is often an exciting situation with a view to the future: an expectation of growth and accomplishment, a gradual gathering of skill, reputation and knowledge, knowing how, so a person can eventually finish or get or achieve something, reach the end of the trail, the top of the mountain, complete the advanced degree or perfect the difficult skill. All of this is done so we will eventually be or learn or have something more or something other than what we are or what we know or what we have now. That’s why the monk asked, “How should I give up my effort?” And that’s why Yunmen responded “Give up the words you just uttered.” He could as well have said, “There is no ‘how’ to it, I’m afraid.”
After a while—a rather long while, truth be told—I had to admit that entering the way of Zen must not be like beginning any other quest. This one simply cannot be accomplished. Goal oriented patterns are actually not so useful for investigating the mystery of life and death, precisely because it is a mystery. In all honesty we do not know, cannot say, cannot imagine, cannot visualize what the mystery is because the second we know something, it ceases to be mystery. Achievement and accomplishment in this context are very attractive . . . but they are sidetracks, red herrings, delusions, mistakes. Nobody’s fault, you understand, just—oops!
Soto teacher Brad Warner wrote:
Part of striving for a goal is telling yourself that you’re not good enough, that you’ve got to push harder.
The idea that what is here and now is less valuable than what’s over there just past the finish line prevents us from ever being truly content and happy right where we are. No matter what your ultimate goal is, it’s always off in the distance. It’s never here.
In order to learn to be truly content here, you have to practice being truly content here. And that means giving up any notion that there’s something better just around the next bend.
And yet—there is something in our experience that draws us . . . like the scent of night-blooming jasmine in the dark. There’s something about being, which we generally take for granted, but it’s something deeply, pervasively attractive that is somehow always just eluding us, just out of sight, just faintly heard or felt, maybe, something bigger, deeper, older, more vast than we can say—something immensely patient and already here—something prior—waiting for our willing attention.
What we don’t know about life is: what in the world is going on? There’s sorrow, disease, tragedy, pain—and life isn’t fair. The tender and blameless are cruelly hurt and killed. The people we love, die, and we lose them and miss them one by one—if we’re lucky, that is; many at a time if we’re unlucky. And then we die. We disappear from the world and the world disappears from us. What?!?
To begin in Zen is to be willing to look at and question everything we take for granted. Open your eyes—and the world appears! Close your eyes and it disappears. Huh?! Color, shape, sound, touch . . . breathing? I and you, here and there, up and down, inside and outside, air, water, ground, people, animals. Floor, walls … gone? Maybe the world appears when I open my eyes because the appearances we call “world” are nothing other than the extended surface of what we call “eyes.”
Furthermore, what is “inside”—and what is “outside”? Maybe it’s obvious, but at the moment I can’t say. This, right here, right now, is the most important place, the beginning place, where nothing is what it seems to be or what we think it is. What are we supposed to do here? Just attend. It is the quality of attention that notices this breath called “in” and this breath called “out” and we say “One.” And though we then notice with every ounce of attention this breath called “in” and this breath called “out” and say “Two,” it is an entirely new and different experience. Being is never the same, moment to moment. The whole world has changed between count one and count two. Let the last moment die utterly, abandon it. This is living without expectation, in tune with a world where nothing is guaranteed, nothing is the same as it was.
We are invited to throw ourselves totally into each new moment. With courage, throw ourselves even into, or especially into what the mind calls unpleasantness. When that happens, self is forgotten. “The self forgotten is equitable, assured, realized.” [Aitken: Morning Star, p. 113]
Judy Lief wrote: Enlightenment cannot be produced . . . no matter how many teachers we serve or meditation retreats we do, we cannot force it to occur. Enlightenment is not a thought; it is not an attainment. It is inherent.
Because nothing is ever the same as it was; because this ordinary moment is actually unique with a capital U—it has never been exactly like this before, and it will never be the same again, either. The ancient Greek philosopher, Heraclitus pointed this out when he said, “Everything flows” and, “No man ever steps in the same river twice.” This is the fundamental feature of life called impermanence. The only unalterable fact is change. How can we live if this is so?
Do you think that taking that morning vitamin or brushing your teeth is “the same as it ever was”? Look again—only the story-telling mind sees it as the same. In actuality, this morning’s vitamin did not agree with me, though usually it goes down without any hesitation. Story-telling is such a crude instrument really. It picks out similarities and ignores differences in the interest of creating stability for us. Sweet, really, and a useful tool for the most part. It supports the habit of taking those vitamins, in this case. But it’s also misguided even as it works wonderfully well at upholding this imaginary “same-old, same-old” world.
To consider brushing your teeth as boring is to validate the talking mind that says, “This isn’t important: spend your energy figuring out something that is important.” But what if this were the very last time you would ever brush your teeth because you might suddenly lose the use of your hands? or what if your teeth began to break and crumble? My mind says, “Oh don’t be silly, you’re just catastrophizing.” Yet I’ve had episodes of crumbling teeth—finding odd crunchy bits of tooth in the scrambled eggs. And sometimes fingers do go numb.
We used to visit my dad in his independent living apartment in Portland. I was in the habit even then of thinking, this might be the last time we stay here, visiting like this. When COVID entered the scene, it was the better part of two years before we saw him in person again—except for weekly Zoom visits. On October 3 last year, we were able to visit in person for his 100th birthday party, put on by the senior living staff. Twenty-six days later he fell and was hospitalized (no visitors allowed) and we were back in his old rooms, packing and sorting furiously. The hospital wouldn’t release him until he was placed in memory care. Luckily, he was admitted to a facility not far from the old apartment. But he did not want visitors, and four months later he died.
Geoffrey Shugen Arnold once wrote:
In a moment of true liberation, we can’t rely on what we’ve known or done before. We can’t rely on meaning or precedent. We have to break free of them, as well as of our old way of seeing the world. Sometimes we need to be shaken to the core in order to stop. Otherwise, we can just spin and spin. MAY 31, 2022 in Trike (Tricycle Daily)
So as Dad’s life ended, we could no longer rely on what we’d known or done before. Nobody mentioned the quality of that experience—what that might feel like. It was open, raw, unmediated, clear, like a first gasp of fresh air when you’ve run out of oxygen. A moment maybe, nothing more. We were freed from a lot of old patterns, habits, suppositions. But there is still the muscle memory of carrying sleeping bags and overnight totes up the hill to the entryway of his former apartment, over to the elevators, turning left to the far end of the C-wing, knocking at the door, surprised greetings, opening the folding couch . . . as though surely we’d always come back to Portland and we’d always be navigating around dementia, a warped sense of humor, and smudged reading glasses.
Judy Lief continues:
Yet glimpses of enlightenment crop up all the time—in the in-between spaces or gaps . . .
But then I notice those insights, and with the noticing comes commentary, and with the commentary comes the desire to hold on to them as highlights or credentials.What was a fresh insight is no longer fresh, nor an insight. It is no longer a gap in ego fixation, but instead a further means of holding it together. And so it goes. What at one moment is a breakthrough, a gap, is quickly co-opted by ego, so that by the next moment, it has itself become an obstacle to be broken through.
Here we are sitting zenkai once again—is it all as useless as it sounds? Although Yunmen advises us to give up the question of how to proceed, how to give up effort, we have to have some notion of what to do next—or do we?
The eleventh-century Kagyu master Tilopa said something that may sound like directions but for me it works more like a mind-boggler, slapping me upside the head repeatedly, until the very last line. Maybe you’ll enjoy it too:
Don’t recall. Let go of what has passed.
Don’t imagine. Let go of what may come.
Don’t think. Let go of what is happening now.
Don’t examine. Don’t try to figure anything out.
Don’t control. Don’t try to make anything happen.
Rest. Relax, right now, and rest. (trans. Ken McLeod)
A Tibetan teacher once said to his students, “Sometimes what you know can be your problem. Being open to any given moment is more important than knowing what to do.”
Because as I said earlier—there is something in our experience that draws us . . . like the scent of night-blooming jasmine in the dark. There’s something about being, which we generally take for granted, but it’s something deeply, pervasively attractive that is somehow always just eluding us, just out of sight, just faintly heard or felt, maybe, something bigger, deeper, older, more vast than we can say—something immensely patient and already here—something prior—waiting for our willing attention.
During a Zoom intensive, Jack once encouraged us to write poetic impressions of each of the twelve “hours,” the ancient Chinese two-hour-long periods of the day. I went out to the back yard at 3am and sat on a lawn chair. At that time of night, after early waking and sitting through the day following the retreat schedule, I didn’t have the energy left to recall, imagine, think, examine, or control anything. It seemed that the trees were patiently waiting to speak.
And this is what emerged:
It’s almost quiet but for endless distant freeway noise.
Diffuse city light and high haze, a pale dome overhead.
The ancient stars blink through, brilliant. The air is cool and still.
I’m held by the great trees’ dark steadiness—clear, long and true.
Trees as thirsty as my poor parched garden. A shooting star
briefly etches a bright line among the branches. The trees–
the stars and trees say stop trying: it obscures the deep care.
It’s clear they don’t mean give up, just please get out of the way.
the stars and trees say stop trying: it obscures the deep care.
It’s clear they don’t mean give up, just please get out of the way.