by Domyo Burk | Dec 11, 2012 | Your Zen Toolbox
Periodically Zen Buddhists gather for sesshin, or 5-10 day silent meditation retreats. During sesshin participants follow a rigorous schedule from dawn until dusk that includes 5-10 hours a day of seated meditation (and sometimes more).
Sesshin is a powerful tool for spiritual transformation.
A little like a meditation marathon, sesshin requires enormous endurance. Experiences during sesshin include periods of bliss, boredom, profound stillness and peace, agitation, exquisite appreciation for just-this-moment, tremendous aversion to just-this-moment, deeper concentration than is usually possible outside of sesshin, and periods of having to endure compulsive thought patterns that repeat endlessly like broken records. Experiences include profound insights of either a universal or personal nature, and seemingly prolonged periods of frustration, fruitless striving, sleepiness and dullness. There can be periods of great physical or emotional discomfort or pain, and periods when we settle so completely that this pain is transcended.
And usually you will experience at least a little of every of one of these things over the course of a single sesshin.
The irony is that when you tell people you are going to a meditation retreat they often sigh enviously because they think you are going away for a week of pleasant peacefulness. Ha! You think, “If they only knew how I was going to spend my vacation time, they would think I was crazy.” And, sometime during the sesshin, when you enter your fourth or fifth straight hour of painful, dull meditation, you will probably think you are crazy, too.
What keeps people coming back to sesshin, despite the sometimes grueling nature of it? It’s not the moments of a sesshin that are peaceful and pleasant, although those are very nice. It’s the overall effect on our Zen practice and our life.
Spending a week in sesshin is comparable to spending time in graduate school, or in an intensive training course, the subject matter being your own mind. You may learn a great deal studying in your spare time, but nothing compares to setting aside the time and energy to delve as deeply into a subject as you possibly can.
What we study in sesshin is not about the content of our mind, although we will end up learning a great deal about that. What we are focusing on is how we use our mind. Or, actually, our “body-mind,” because there is no separation between our body and our mind. We ended up with this human body-mind, and it is often assumed that by the time we have turned 18 – or, perhaps, 21, or 30, but certainly by 40 or 50 – we know how to be that body-mind and fulfill its full potential. Nothing could be further from the truth.
There are infinite ways to screw up this human life, or at least to compromise it. We unknowingly dwell in delusion and misunderstanding, and create suffering for ourselves and others – deliberately or with the best of intentions. We let skeletons hide in our closets until they bust out at some moment we are at our most vulnerable. We let our fears control us and chase away the intimacy we crave. On the other hand, there are infinite ways to deepen, expand, clarify and intensify our experience of this human life. No subject can be studied completely, to the point that everything is known, so of course this is the case with so profound a subject as how to best use this incredible instrument called a human body-mind.
If you are suffering deeply, going to sesshin to face that suffering can seem very daunting. Indeed, your experience of sesshin may be quite challenging as you try to allow yourself to see and fully experience what is troubling you. It is generally always worth it.
If you don’t think sesshin sounds worth it because your life is good enough as it is, that’s fine. However, to quote one of our zen ancestors, “When dharma does not fill your whole body and mind, you think it is already sufficient. When dharma fills your body and mind, you understand that something is missing.”[1] Of course something is missing; in an infinite universe, how could you have it all?
[1] From the “Genjo Koan” by Eihei Dogen, translated by Kaz Tanahashi.
by Domyo Burk | Nov 3, 2012 | Samadhi Power: Stopping and Seeing
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by Domyo Burk | Oct 27, 2012 | Samadhi Power: Stopping and Seeing
Every time we sit down in meditation we are challenged to face our shit. What is really going on in our body-mind? What ideas are we stubbornly holding onto? What are we afraid of? What would we rather not deal with – anger, resentment, longing, dissatisfaction, numbness? What, or who, are we rejecting? What aspect of our lives makes us want to act selfishly or childishly – by throwing a tantrum, blaming others, or refusing to participate?
We don’t have go seeking for our shit when we meditate. Zazen, seated meditation, doesn’t have to become a grim session of taking account of how crappy our life is or how flawed we are. We also need to be open to awareness of the joy and positivity in our life; we have to be completely open to awareness of everything as it is. However, we are much more likely to be open to the positive stuff than we are to the negative stuff, so facing the shit takes some intention and courage.
I like to think of “opening the doors of my mind” during zazen to whatever might wander in. The Zen ceremony of Segaki ritually enacts this process when the doors of the temple are opened wide and the hungry ghosts – or manifestations of unresolved stuff – are invited to enter. It is surprising how effective this ceremony is. Many people report unresolved stuff coming up for them as they sit zazen in the day-long retreat that follows the ceremony in my tradition. In the evening there is a ceremony to send the “ghosts” on their way, but it often takes much longer to become familiar with a new ghost, learn what it has to teach, and then take the actions necessary to truly send it away.
When I open the doors of my mind as I settle on the meditation cushion, I always feel some trepidation. What am I going to discover? What am I going to have to deal with? Am I going to have to change?
When I finally summon the courage to face my shit I am always surprised to find that – no matter how bad it is – it is less anxiety-provoking to face it than it is to avoid it. Finding something behind the door can be scary and might require serious action, but in the long run it’s better than sensing there’s something behind the door but just wondering how terrifying it might be. When we really face our shit there is often some sense of relief. In addition, avoiding or denying parts of our reality increases our sense of separation or isolation from our whole life and from the people and situations we encounter. When we are one with our shit we are more fully present with everything.
When trying to summon the courage to face our shit during meditation (or anytime) it can be helpful to recall the sense of relief or presence that can be achieved by doing so. Sometimes it also helps to imagine the worst that is likely to come through the doors of our mind and ask ourselves if it would be the end of the world (it rarely would be). Alternatively we might talk ourselves into facing our shit by noticing how tired we are of running away from it.
Once we are determined to be still no matter what comes at us, we expand our awareness by letting go of any idea about our life, our body-mind, or what we should or should not be experiencing at this moment. Then our shit can arise and find itself recognized and embraced – because, after all, it’s not coming at us from outside, it was already here.
by Domyo Burk | Oct 13, 2012 | Personal Musings
I spent last week at a conference for Soto Zen priests. There were 90 of us at the Soto Zen Buddhist Association (SZBA) gathering. We were defined as much, or more, by our differences as by what we held in common. In the 45 years or so that Soto Zen has been developing amongst western converts in America, priests and lineages have stayed quite true to the American ideal of individualism, freedom and innovation. Within lineages there has been some degree of conformity, but between lineages there are often vast differences, especially regarding priest training. For example, in one lineage it is expected that an ordained person will spend at least 7 years in a monastery before becoming an independent priest. In another lineage ordained people typically stay in the monastery for their entire lives. In yet another lineage, lay practitioners with jobs and families are ordained and become independent priests without ever living in a monastery or residential practice community. We are like a herd of cats.
This is why it is so remarkable that this group of priests is striving so hard to stay together – to find out what we hold in common, or what we want to hold in common. At first glance the only thing we could find was this: we all feel passionately about being priests. We all feel that we deserve to be priests, that being priests is one of the most important things in our lives, and that priests are vital to the flourishing of Soto Zen.
This is not much to start with, in one way. All of this passion could just be ego-delusion. We might just be clinging to a role or a label without much to substantiate our claim.
Nonetheless we keep up the dialogue with one another, constantly seeking for things we agree on and trying to minimize the divisiveness caused by the many things we passionately disagree about. Why? Why don’t we all just go our separate ways? It’s a free country. Nothing is stopping any of us from calling ourselves Soto Zen priests and functioning as religious leaders for anyone who cares to come practice with us.
The longer I am involved with the SZBA the more deeply I understand why we stay together. It is a difficult thing to describe, but this starts to get at the heart of the matter: together we can create something greater than any of us could create by ourselves. Or together we can create something greater than any of the lineages could create by themselves.
Exactly what this “greater thing” we are creating will be we don’t even know at this point. Nonetheless we can sense its character when we taste the satisfaction of completing a communal project – one that required us to speak up for our positions but also listen to others and find a creative way to function together. We can sense the character of this “greater thing” when we grudgingly learn to respect and even like colleagues that hold views very different from our own. We especially sense the character of what we are creating together when we feel the growing power and stability present in a group of peers that has tested, questioned and come to understand and trust one another.
Frankly there have been times when I wish I could simply set the agenda and the standards and force everyone else to comply. At other times I wanted to give up and take my toys home, feeling like whatever is being created together is so far from my ideals that it is irrelevant to me. I am grateful that I have not done any of these things. Even though at times I find myself thinking of a phrase I learned from a friend of mine, “It takes all kinds. Unfortunately.”
I imagine this is something like what the founding father felt when they created the United States of America against all odds. It’s really pretty amazing.
by Domyo Burk | Sep 22, 2012 | Understanding: Fundamental Teachings to Investigate
Have you ever heard someone – usually not a Buddhist practitioner – summarize the central Buddhist teaching as “life is suffering?” Sometimes people end up with the impression that the Buddha’s teaching was something like this: “Generally speaking, life is a terrible experience. The best thing to do is withdraw from life as much as possible, literally and emotionally.” Put another way, when people hear that the Buddha counseled “detachment,” it can sound to them like he advised his followers to make a practice of disassociation so they could live out their lives with a minimum of pain. This view of Buddhism can make Buddhist practitioners appear at best like cowards, and at worst, cold and heartless (if, perhaps, admirable in their self-discipline).
Sadly, this is a complete misunderstanding of a teaching that is absolutely central to Buddhism. It is important that it be properly understood so people don’t reject or misuse a teaching that could, potentially, be a profound source of liberation.
Part of the misunderstanding of the Buddhist teaching about the nature of human existence arises from difficulties in the translation of Buddhism from one language to another. The word that is typically translated as “suffering” is dukkha. Dukkha, at least as used by Buddhists, is a word that has no simple English equivalent, and most Buddhist scholars agree the word suffering is too limited in its meanings to serve as a direct translation. Thus, dukkha has been alternatively translated as anxiety, uneasiness, stress, unsatisfactoriness and discontent. According to Monier-Williams in his Sanskrit-English Dictionary, duhkha means “uneasy, uncomfortable, unpleasant, difficult.”
If we give up trying to translate dukkha into one word, it could be said that it is an existential sense that things are not as they should be, which manifests in human experience in varying degrees between despair (things are vastly different from the way things should be) and a vague uneasiness (things are not quite as they should be). By “existential sense” I mean a perception based on our experience of the world as self-conscious beings. Whether we are philosophers or not, the nature of our existence and our relationship to the world is of supreme importance to us. We are sentient beings who are acutely aware of our existence, and therefore our potential non-existence. When humans contemplate this great matter, we typically experience dukkha.
The subtle nature of the experience of dukkha can be understood further from its etymology. Sargeant (2009, p. 303) explains the historical roots of duḥkha and its antonym sukha:
It is perhaps amusing to note the etymology of the words sukha (pleasure, comfort, bliss) and duḥkha (misery, unhappiness, pain). The ancient Aryans who brought the Sanskrit language to India were a nomadic, horse- and cattle-breeding people who travelled in horse- or ox-drawn vehicles. Su and dus are prefixes indicating good or bad. The word kha, in later Sanskrit meaning "sky," "ether," or "space," was originally the word for "hole," particularly an axle hole of one of the Aryan's vehicles. Thus sukha … meant, originally, "having a good axle hole," while duhkha meant "having a poor axle hole," leading to discomfort.
For me, it helps to demystify dukkha to imagine someone getting nauseous from riding in a cart that keeps swaying from side to side who is thinking to himself, “Oy, this is very uncomfortable.”
Dukkha – discomfort, stress, discontent – obviously arises when we encounter experiences that cause us suffering, like physical pain, illness, loss, trauma, not getting what one wants, old age and dying. But it also arises when we experience happiness, joy, boredom, enthusiasm and whole host of other things. Even the most positive, rewarding and enjoyable experience is at least slightly colored by the fact that it will end, or by the fact that at the same moment innocent people are in the midst of terrible suffering. Most of us experience at least a low-grade dukkha all the time. It is like a mild depression we don’t notice until we come out of it, or an ache we have gotten used to. The vague sense that things are not quite as they should be pervades everything.
Why do we feel the subtlest kind of dukkha, even when everything is going great for us? Underneath all of our more blatant resistance to difficulty and pain, the problem is basically this: we want things to rely on, but all things are impermanent and empty of any inherent, independent, enduring self. Including us. We may not even understand what is bothering us, but the intuition that absolutely everything is impermanent is unnerving.
Every mobile creature on the planet, from an amoeba on up, moves away from things that cause it harm or pain, and toward things that protect and nourish it. This is how separate units of life survive, reproduce and evolve. The desire to look after ourselves is extremely powerful, especially in a creature like us that has a strong memory of its past and the ability to imagine its future. But the amoeba doesn’t care that all things are impermanent and empty; it just goes on about its business of self-preservation and promotion without a conscious sense of self. Human beings, on the other hand, identify our bodies, sensations, perceptions, thoughts and consciousness as “self.” As one moment flows into the next we have a sense of continuity that we assume is the enduring part of who we are.
The assumption that there is an enduring part of who we are is wrong. In reality we are only flow. Our self is a composite of materials, processes and emergent phenomena that produces a sensation of an inherent, independent, enduring self. This sensation is extremely adaptive, but in a very intelligent animal it can produce a side-effect of existential angst. What does such an animal do when it suspects it actually has no definable boundaries and is only flow? What does it protect and promote? What can it rely on safety and refuge?
To the sages of the Buddha’s time there appeared to be only two responses to dukkha:
- Keep trying to change conditions so we won't feel resistance to them, and ultimately find something permanent to rely on
- Live with dukkha
The Buddha realized everything was impermanent and empty of an inherent self, so he knew #1 was not an option. He refused to accept #2. Fortunately, he saw a third option:
- Let go of the resistance to things as they are, and of the search for something permanent to rely on
The Buddha discovered a simple way for human beings to free themselves from the anxiety-provoking experience of dukkha: let go of the thought that things are not as they should be, particularly the thought that all things, especially us, are permanent and have an inherent, independent, enduring self. Put another way: don’t fight the nature of the universe, change your mind.
If this sounds to you like a defeatist approach that would lead to more suffering, you haven’t actually tried it.
Monier-Williams (1899, 1964), A Sanskrit-English Dictionary, London: Oxford University Press
Sargeant, Winthrop (2009), The Bhagavad Gita, SUNY Press
by Domyo Burk | Sep 22, 2012 | Personal Musings
In working with the Precepts, I have found it useful to “translate” them for myself, using words that capture, for me, the flavor of how each Precept manifests in my life. I imagine that every person will have their own translation of each Precept, depending on their karma. Contemplate them and see for yourself! The official translations used at Bright Way are in bold italics; my interpretations follow, in plain text.
Do Not Kill – Cultivate and Encourage Life
Do Not See Anything as Separate from Yourself – See and Honor Every Being and Thing as a Manifestation of Buddha Nature
Do Not Steal – Honor the Gift Not Yet Given
Do Not Place Self-Interest before Consideration for Others – Trust That You Have All You Truly Need
Do Not Misuse Sexuality – Remain Faithful in Relationships
Do Not Use the Power of Sexual Attraction Merely For Pleasure, Or For Building and Maintaining Your Sense of Self – Negotiate the Intricacies of Human Intimacy with Care, Respect and Honor
Do Not Speak Dishonestly – Communicate Truthfully
Do Not Hide Your Mistakes or Your True Nature with Coarse Or Subtle Lies – Speak From Your True Heart
Do Not Become Intoxicated – Polish Clarity, Dispel Delusion
Do Not Take Refuge in Distractions – Cultivate the Clarity and Energy Required For Practice
Do Not Dwell On Past Mistakes – Create Wisdom from Ignorance
Do Not Dwell Unnecessarily On the Past or Future – Have Faith in Your Ability, and the Ability of Others, To Grow and Change
Do Not Praise Self or Blame Others – Maintain Modesty, Extol Virtue
Do Not Compare Yourself To Others – Honor Each Person’s Unique Process and Manifestation
Do Not Be Mean With Dharma or Wealth – Share Understanding, Give Freely Of Self
Do Not Worry About Lacking Anything – Take Every Opportunity to Be Generous
Do Not Indulge Anger – Cultivate Equanimity
Do Not Justify Self-defensiveness or Territoriality – Do What Needs To Be Done With an Attitude of Acceptance and Compassion
Do Not Defame the Three Treasures – Respect the Buddha, Unfold the Dharma, Nourish the Sangha
Do Not Give Energy to Skepticism or Cynicism – Cultivate Faith In, and Reverence For, That Which Is Greater
