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Zen
Is Not Kidding
Dharma
Talk Presented by Ven. Shikai Zuiko osho
Dainen-ji, March 2, 2006
It was a very, very, cold night in February about two decades ago. In
a few days I would be receiving postulant’s monk’s vows from
Anzan Hoshin, sensei at the time. We’d spent the evening in the
way that Zen students spend evenings: sitting at Daijozan, the small temple
on Somerset Street East. After the sitting, I’d spent some time
with the, now, Roshi and he had once again gone over the ceremony: what
I was supposed to do, what he would say, how I would reply.
Two, what could have been major obstructions, had already been settled,
accepted. One was that I couldn’t have my cats in the temple. I
didn't "like" it but I didn’t have a choice to make, really,
about that, because I knew that what I was being taught was true. The
second one was that I would never be able to travel again and travelling
was necessary for how I made a living. And I liked it. But that wasn’t
much of an obstacle to overcome, either. So those things were all settled
and away and I was prepared to offer up body, breath, speech, and mind,
flesh, blood, marrow, as a monastic for the liberation of all beings.
And this is something that I had wanted to do ever since I was a little
girl but I didn’t know how it would happen and I didn’t have
any model for it until I was in my forties.
I left Daijozan, heavy winter coat on, and I crunched, crunched, down
the sidewalk, walking towards Strathcona Park. And those little thoughts
started coming: "What am I doing?", "WHAT am I doing??"
"What if it's not true?" "Wait, wait, wait. Wait, it's
true." "I’ve experienced it. I’ve experienced that
I am not any of my thoughts and feelings and that unconditioned open experiencing
is what the bodymind does." "Zazen helps clear up the obstructions
that impede that". "But what if I’m fooling myself?"
"What am I going to do?" By the time I reached Strathcona Park,
I was considerably agitated and it became apparent that I had to do something,
and that, obviously, the only sane thing to do, was to go back to Daijozan
and confront the Roshi: Make him, force him, to tell me whether this was
true or not.
So bravely girding myself, I turned around, started to walk back. What
would happen when I rang the door bell? It was getting quite late by now.
As I got to Daijozan, I noticed that the lights were out on the first
floor. Well, too bad. This was important. I rang.
I knocked (knock,knock,knock) on the door. I rang and (knock, knock, knock – Osho rapping the floor) the door opened. Looming, lit from behind,
like a panel from a graphic novel, was the Roshi. Eyes wide open, I look
at the Roshi and said, “This better be true!. If this is not true,
I will come back and haunt you forever." And the Roshi looked down
at me and with kind of a grandmotherly approach – you know the child
is out of control – he looked at me and he said, ‘We’re
not serious, but we’re not kidding” and he closed the door.
Somehow, the “We’re not kidding” part satisfied me because
part of the reason why I had started to practice – and this may ring
true for some of you – was that for most of my life, I knew that
people had been trying to kid me, telling me the most absurd stories about
what was going on when I would ask them. So here was the situation where
there was going to be no kidding. Zen is not kidding.
Now I’m sure
all of you know that there is a great deal of humour involved with practice.
The history of practice is filled with examples: in zenga, the Zen drawings,
in koan, in stories of interaction, in the raucous laughter that can come
up when we see how silly we can be, so I could understand, definitely,
the “not serious” part and I could also see how I had made
this into a very, very, very serious thing. Now there is a difference
between being sincere and being “serious”. Because of course
"the serious" can taint our experience as there’s a self
there who has its own interpretation of what is going on. When we can
see that seriousness, that seriousness coming into being, and recognize
the contraction, remember to practice, feel the breath, feel our hands
and feet, feel the space around the body, that "seriousness can drop
away".
I didn’t quite understand the depth of that “not kidding”
part because I, like you, was a "reasonable human being with many sterling
qualities", with a heart that wanted to be helpful. Of course, self-image
- the views I had of myself and how the world was – did tend to
get a little skewed and some of the patterns of self-image, of course,
hadn’t even been seen yet, let alone had time to wear out. Also,
one of the things the Roshi told me, and you may have heard this from
time to time, Zen practice, which is not kidding, will, over time, show
you that almost everything you think to be true about how you are and
how the world is, is a way of kidding yourself.
You’ve created many views, many stances, that you carry with you
through the day, into the practice hall, into daisan and practice interviews.
Sometimes you carry them proudly, like wonderful little trinkets that
you’ve picked up and are going to present which will of course show
how clever you are and it can be quite surprising when, in daisan, we
sit down, and in response to “How’s your practice?”
we might say something like, “ Oh, its really wonderful, its so
wonderful, its making everything easier for me!” and the Dharma
teacher or practice advisor might say “Yes, but how’s your
practice right now?” You’re telling yourself a story about
how you are. We may or may not see that; there may or may not be a rush
of reactivity. We may feel slighted, insulted, angry. “Who the h….
does she think she is to talk like that to me?” We tend not to articulate
those kinds of thoughts because another role that self-image has in day
to day interaction – usual interaction – is one of kind of
a censor. It goes, “this is an appropriate thought, this is not
an appropriate thought". So we sort through them, presenting only
that which we think will reflect well on us.
Now, there’s nothing wrong with good intentions. There’s nothing
wrong with wanting to help people in other areas of the community, be
it the local or the global community, sort out their stuff, but it has
nothing to do with our practice. At the time, I was also very keen on
a project I had which had to do with feeding people in underdeveloped
countries. One day I showed up at Daijozan with a proposal I had written
for this and I was so proud of it and I thought perhaps there will be
some little pat on the back with this wonderful project. The Roshi picked
up the paper, sort of flicked it back and forth, put it in the drawer
of the table, closed the drawer – that was it. I never heard anything
more about it! So, of course I considered why this would be the case.
And of course self-image came up, presented various points of view as
to how this should have been handled, because self image is like that
- it would like to be the one in charge and be the one dictating how everything
about our practice should be handled. When we’re neophytes with
practice, however long that may be in our practice career, we don’t
yet see how crazy it is to listen to self image with its view of how things
should be with our practice and then to follow it. If self image knew
how to practice, why would we not be sitting in the Teacher’s seat?
When we are following the dictates of self image and our conditioned views
about what’s going on, how we are, how our practice is, we’re
kidding ourselves. We’re kidding ourselves that we know what obviously
we do not know. Now, how crazy is that?
We come to practice with all of our past experiences, our past history,
and we do believe that that’s who we are. And we’re reluctant
sometimes - sometimes, even more than 'reluctant'-to see those things
for what they are, which is one point of view and certainly not worthy
of all of our attention to the exclusion of everything else. Each time
that we allow attention to fall into and follow any contracted state,
we are making a conscious choice to limit and obstruct the intelligence
and luminosity of open experiencing. Why would we want to do that? The
only reason we do it is because we’re used to it.
Zazen gives us a way to look at the process of our experiencing. It gives
us a way to see more of the details of experiencing. And it gives us access
to a lineage of teachers that for 2600 years have been busy not kidding
about the nature of experiencing and the nature of reality.
Sometimes, people like to talk of their life as a "journey". Well, it
can be called a 'journey'. But sometimes the "journey", sometimes the
word is said in such a way that one gets the impression that at the end
of the journey there’s going to be some remarkable state achieved
of self-transcendence, of being all-knowing, all-seeing, of perhaps hovering
slightly above the zafu as we’re sitting. When we enter into the
Path of practice, the straight Path, we are all carrying big "back-packs".
Back-packs full of all sorts of crap. Now if Dainenji were an airline,
most of us would definitely be charged for over weight baggage.
Now there’s a little poem that was written – that I wrote,
actually – and is in the book, "The Straight Path",
Back-packing the Straight Path – Instructions for the
Zendo.
Bare bones
bare flesh
ONLY.
Leave the back-pack of self image:
parent, child, male, female,
straight, gay, old, young,
black, white,
older, younger,
at the door with your shoes and socks
Pick it up on your way out.
Too heavy?
Unpack in Suchness
and the load
lightens.”
That will prove true over and over and over again. Anytime you notice
a contraction, a heaviness of any sort, an identification with any particular
set of thoughts and feelings while you’re sitting, practice. Feel
the breath, sit up straight, open the eye gaze, and guess what? It drops
away. We’re not kidding. All you have to do is do it. Now, I won’t
kid you and say this is going to be always easy. Practice is not difficult.
Life is a pain. There is always something going on so there’s always
something to be practiced with. Sometimes, the practice can be incredibly
difficult because we make it so. We believe all our stories of reluctance,
recoil, arrogance, whining, whinging, being better than, and on and on
and on. But each time you notice that, you have an opportunity to lighten
that moment by noticing the rest of what is going on, which is the rest
of your life: the breath, the heart beating, the spine straightening,
the eyes opening and softening.
Self image is kidding anytime it comes up and tells you anything about
how your practice is. It’s a greedy little sucker. If it experiences
a moment of openness, immediately it wants to paint the rest of your time
on the zafu in the same tones. When you recognize that, you’re recognizing
a contraction, a conditioning of open experiencing and so you practice.
Anything other than open experiencing- experiencing as it actually is
when its unconditioned - hurts. The hurt can be just a little pinch or
it can be a knockout blow. It hurts. And you’re doing it to yourself.
No one else is doing it to you. When you learn to recognize that, you
have a very important key to freedom from conditioned experiencing because
you can take responsibility for this moment and this moment and this moment.
Zen is not kidding. It is offering you everything you need to wake up
who who you really are in this moment and this moment and this moment.
Anzan Hoshin Roshi wrote, “Straight up and down and all around and
back again. Here it is.”
Zen is not kidding.
Thank you for listening.
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2006 White Wind Zen Community. All rights reserved.
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