A Little Death, A Little Birth - Every Moment

Since I found myself recounting this story over the weekend yet again, I felt it was finally  time for me to write about here.  I'd shared the general story a while back as a comment on Dangerous Harvests for a post titled "Just Die Completely".  Nathan's post was full of some good info and perspectives so if you like this check his out especially if you're a little bummed about life right now.

The summer before my junior year of high school, my family found out we would be moving to a new city about a thousand miles away.  A lot of people might think of this as a new and exciting opportunity; a chance to experience a new world and make new friends.

We did not.

As a family, there were some pretty big issues to deal with.  We had roots.  Most of our extended family lived where we were.  I had lived my whole life in houses no more than ten miles away from each other.  My dad would be moving in November and we wouldn't follow him until the summer after.

The few good friends I had I had known since kindergarten.  I didn't know how to make friends easily (and still don't) since nearly all of my activities had revolved around essentially the same twenty classmates until high school and even then I had classes with pretty much all the same students.

I knew my future was going to be different, I just thought that my past was my past and there was nothing anyone could do to take that away from me.  The more I thought about how much of an investment I had made of my past for the future, that changed.

Some of the smaller examples were things like not graduating with my high school class.  Where I came from, which high school you went to (for reasons I'm still not sure I understand) is apparently one of the most important things people want to know about you.  What was I to say?  My class ring was from one school, but my diploma would be for another.  Should I even bother getting a letter jacket?  It wouldn't come until just before I moved away and I couldn't wear it at another school, especially one that no one had heard of.

I'd put off dating (not initially so much of a conscious decision, but it was still a reason) until I would be able to drive.  It didn't seem very "adult" to have to rely on parents to drive me and a date around.  Now that I was going into my junior year with that ability, I didn't see the point.  Why would I start a relationship knowing that I would have to end it in less than nine months?  So I saved myself the trouble and did without.

The biggest blow was that of choice of university.  I'd pretty much planned where I wanted to go to school for as long as I knew of it as a possibility.  It was within walking distance of my home so I could live off campus.  They offered programs that I was interested in.  I didn't even bother seriously considering any other school.  It was expensive, but only enough so where living at home would be enough of a break to make it possible.  Moving a thousand miles away made that not such an easy choice.

So slowly I watched my future fall away in front of me like a road collapsing into the void.  Looking behind, my past followed.  I found myself adrift in the emptiness of time.  I was starting to find myself as a person but the identity that I had built for my future self in the past no longer mattered since my future was now gone.

There was a numb sadness, a fear that I didn't recognize.  There was no anger, only the helplessness of an overturned turtle.  I was still just a child, a teenager yes, but I had no real say or power in the situation.  My only option was to accept it.

And I did my best to do just that.  My life kept going, I made new friends, experienced things I hadn't even dreamt of.  There are still echos persisting in my life, even to this day.  But they're not all bad; depending on how I view them they're quite good.

While I didn't realize it at the time, this was my first, and in some ways, most important lesson in the Dharma.  I didn't have the tools to wrap my mind around it at the time, but this is impermanence.  That feeling of drifting, disconnected from the past and the future was a "little death" and it was very powerful.

In a way it was also freedom, though, the freedom to become a new person which I did somewhat.  I'm a very habitual person.  I fall into a habit and it's very difficult to get out.  It doesn't matter how destructive it may be, it still feels somewhat comfortable.  This taste of freedom was only a taste, though.  It would take me another fifteen years of life to see the true potential of what started cooking so long ago.

I didn't have my practice to rely on, or any teachings like I do now to help me get through all of that, but I did alright.  Now I'm fortunate to have the tools I do and with the grounding of that experience, I also have the perspective to see every moment's possibility for a "little birth." Each moment is a new opportunity to change myself for the better, to shake bad habits and build new ones.

It's important to remember the universe doesn't make distinctions.  The Dharma just is.  While it may be warm and comforting, it can also burn like hellfire.  We experience what we need.  All those Zen masters prone to beating their students or pushing them out windows, they weren't sadistic.  That was compassion.  They did what needed to be done for their students to wake up.

I try not to regret my experiences as bad, any of them.  I have no more control to change them than I did to prevent our relocation all those years ago.  I can only do what I can do.  So that's what I'll keep on doing.

This, of course, isn't an excuse to slack off, it is in no way resigning myself to fate or falling into predestination. It takes effort, unwavering effort, to do all that I can do.  I still have a choice, it is still freedom.  I can always just relax and let things happen, but there will be consequences.  "Freedom isn't free" as they say, it comes with a price.

So with fifteen years of experiences and results to reflect on, I'm okay with what happened.  I am who I am today because of it.  The person I wanted to be doesn't exist and I'm fine with that because it wouldn't be me.  How often do things really turn out how we expect them to anyway?  And even if they do, do we still feel the way we thought we would when they happen?

Make the best of life, look around and be happy knowing that while it could get worse or it might have been better,  it could also get better or it might have been worse.  Even this doesn't matter though, because we don't live in the past or the future.  We live now.

So live now.

What's So Funny?

As I've been moving things around, both in my apartment and in my head, I of course stumbled across a few things.  In the apartment: my little laughing Buddha statues.  In my head: more thoughts about what's going on with my practice.  The combination has left me with this:

I think Hotei laughs because enlightenment is an inside joke.

I don't get it.  Previously, I didn't care.  If I was going to, so be it, but I was okay not getting it.

That seems to have changed.  While I'm still fine not getting it for now, I'm determined to someday.

On top of that the dharma talk today was all about the Virya Paramita.  Paramita is Sanskrit for "crossing over" and refers to the group of practices that assist us in reaching enlightenment.  The Virya Paramita has to do with enthusiastic perseverance.  It hit home with a lot of people for a lot of different reasons, mine for the reasons listed in my last post.

It's just so weird how that works out.

Doubt

While I don't find it surprising given the number of personal practice blogs I read, it did catch me a little off guard to find myself running into doubt about my practice.  The first real inkling was in my second comment here.  Not too long after posting it, it caused confusion in me.

I don't really not believe in attaining enlightenment, do I?  Have I convinced myself so well that there's no goal or attainment in my practice that I just proceed blindly just because sitting is what I'm supposed to do?

I just started reading John Daido Loori's The Eight Gates of Zen.  It's an interesting read, but a certain passage from his chapter concerning the ten stages of practice really opened my eyes to what was going on.

He uses the Ten Ox Herding Pictures as indicators of the stages of practice, which is more or less what they were intended for. If you're unfamiliar with them here's some wiki info but Jack Daw did a good job summarizing what they mean.  It's basically a metaphor using the ox as our true nature and the process of searching for it, finding it, taming it, and letting it go.

But anyway, I get to the part where he talks about the second stage of practice:

During the early phases of practice, many people are seduced by the exotic trappings of the monastic setting - the robes, incense, sounds of bells, feeling of stillness and awe. This novelty and intensity mark a honeymoon period of practice... 

In the second stage, the student develops great faith, great doubt, and great determination, the three pillars of sound practice... The grasp of the teachings tends to be very intellectual at this point and the whole thrust of practice has to do with taking that intellectual understanding and making it very personal and intimate.

He goes on to use the image of the second picture, that of finding tracks or traces of the ox, to describe how seeing traces, we intellectually perceive the object of our search.

What was most eye opening was the three pillars of sound practice. Until I'd read that I didn't really see what was going on.  I had intellectualized the concept of "no goal" to the point of convincing myself the ox didn't really exist.  How this happened, I don't know.  I hadn't realized I had such faith in what I had learned until doubt showed up, and furthermore hadn't realized I had doubt until the above passage inspired a determination to find out for myself whether or not I believed what I did.

Looking back, there were some signs.   My enthusiasm for my practice hadn't waned, but something was stagnant, I didn't feel I was going anywhere.  Intellectually I knew this was okay, but deep down something still felt absent.  I sat because I felt that was what I was supposed to do, this period was a phase that I was only going to get through if I persevered.

Also, my practice itself came into question.  I'd never counted my breaths, it was just too hard.  I couldn't tell what constituted a thought worthy of starting over or not and my breaths were so long that I had to hold that number for a while to keep thoughts from sneaking in between.  So Dogen's instruction to avoid such practices were somewhat of a relief.  It was far easier to watch the thoughts come and go than to create the thought of counting and holding that track. It seemed to go against the purpose of practice.

But I was starting to doubt that decision as my practice seemed to be more full of thoughts than not.  I was struggling to keep myself in the present. Maybe I had skipped a step in sharpening my focus.

I had been sitting longer at home, but it didn't seem to matter.  Yesterday, sitting at the Zen Center, the second session seemed different though.  Thoughts were still there, but there wasn't as much white noise in the background.  This morning, armed with whatever sprouted in my brain from that passage, my sitting at home was similar.  It felt like it used to as I got about twenty minutes in.

The rest of the section on the second stage discusses how this stage is where the student starts to take the teachings and experiences out of the head  and into life, into actualizing the teachings.  I see this going on with me, but a lot of it still does exist in my mind.  Accidentally I have moments of awareness off the cushion that have a different feeling to them, not good or bad or special just different.  It's almost like the planets of my physical action and my mental action align and I objectively witness an eclipse.  But the action of noticing it, scares it away.

I feel I find myself at the first base camp of my mountain climb of practice.  The walk here has had its difficulties but the view of the mountain has been nice.  At this distance, I see the reality of the climb ahead of me, how serious it is.  I also see the true need for a teacher, a guide who has climbed this mountain before.  My faith was the romantic idea of how wonderful it will be to climb, but now doubt has caused me to rethink it,  "Is it worth it?  Is it really all that they say it is?"  Determination has made its appearance and I'm ready.  I've come this far already, I can't just turn around and forget all that I've seen.

So onward I go.

As Seen on HoustonBelief.com

I was featured today for my intro post on HoustonBelief.com today.

"Zen in the kitchen
Anthony Bourdain inspires a young Buddhist chef to see the universality of food."

If you haven't read it check it out, you might learn something about me you didn't already know.

Apparently name dropping is a pretty good way to get recognized.  I seem to have been misquoted as having been "inspired" by Anthony Bourdain rather than "influenced."  And in context, I was referring to wanting to write, not my views on cooking and spirituality.

Oh, well... guess that's the life of a celebrity. ;)

Just Leaving It All Behind

It saddens me sometimes to read biographical accounts of individuals who, upon discovering some life changing faith, leave their families in favor of monastic life.  I know that some see it as a true calling and may not be leaving very much behind, but having difficulties with personal relationships is sometimes the disease and not just a symptom.  Renouncing the world to live some sheltered pseudo life is not the answer.

There have been times in my life where I could see running off and joining the "circus" so to speak, but usually I was in a mostly happy relationship or pursuing other things that would have interfered.  It did seem romantic and comforting to know such places existed.  Since those times, I've seen what I really would have been missing out on.

That's where the sadness comes in.  Just like everyone else, I've had some hard times, especially in interpersonal relationships.  Things just seemed so awful that I wanted to give up.  Not being a suicide enthusiast, it was going to take some rougher times to get me that extreme, but what is there between normal happy life and just ending it?

If Zen has any sort of analogue to the idea of Evil as opposing its ideals, that would probably be escapism.  Every moment of our Zen existence is geared towards living fully in the moment.  If you truly seek enlightenment, to see your true nature, then you have to live your life.  Good times, bad times,  it's your life and no one else can live it.  Embrace it with attentiveness and gratitude.  You can't just run off to leave your problems behind because they will follow you.

Do I have a problem with monastic life?  Absolutely not, I think it can be a beautiful thing when chosen for the right reasons.  I see it as a sacrifice for the benefit of others, one pointed devotion to becoming a living resource of wisdom and experience.  It takes dedication and determination.  I'm not saying it seems easy in comparison to normal life, just different.

To take vows to avoid the hassle of life is a little odd in this way, almost like a criminal becoming a police officer so he'll stop getting busted.  They're after their own interest and they're still probably going to get busted.  To see the problems of crime and becoming a police officer to reach out to others who were like you and help them, is a different matter.

Monotony is the reward for renouncing the world.  Safe and predictable, it makes life easier.  But so many opportunities for growth are thrown out with the variety of daily life.  Pushing through the ordeals, we are rewarded with a sense of accomplishment.

If my life continues as it is, when the world relieves me of my commitments, monastic life would be a greater choice than golfing in Florida.  But I'm still not ready for that.  Until then I have family to provide me with meaning, struggles and rewards.

This past weekend was fun and all the reminder of that that I needed.  My girlfriend does not share my practice, none of it: cooking, Zen, or Aikido.  We're both fine with that. They're all a big part of my life and take a lot of my time, sometimes a little too much.  So remember what's really important.  Keep things in perspective.  Do what I did and take a step back and observe the situation before you don't recognize yourself anymore.