In this issue:
Socrates said that “an unexamined life is unworthy of a human being.” InRules for Meditation,Great Master Dogen instructs us to “withdraw within, and reflect upon yourself.” And in a famous passage inGenjo koanhe writes:
To study Buddhism is to study the self, to study the self is to forget the self, to forget the self is to be enlightened by everything and this very enlightenment breaks the bonds of clinging to both body and mind not only for oneself, but for all beings.
Also in the Rules Dogen tells us that “the means of training are thousandfold but pure meditation must be done.” So, the relationships and events in each of our individual lives are our own means of training, and as Soto Zen trainees we all share pure meditation as our primary tool for studying the self. That is how we learn how to let go—forget—the myriad manifestations of the self that arise, the regrets and resentments of the past, the fears about the future, our phobias, our traumatic memories, our hopes and expectations.
In letting whatever arises just be there, without grasping after the pleasant or pushing away the unpleasant, we in effect “study” the components of our life that we mistake as making us who we are. We hold them at arms’ length, as it were, and realize that they are simply passing states in thought, memory, and feeling. We recognize, deeply and truly, that they have no solidity, no essential reality. And we release our grip on them and let them spin off and dissolve into the loving flow of Buddha Nature.
Some things have such a powerful hold on our self that it can require an almost physical effort to release them. And some insist on coming up again and again, no matter how often and sincerely we let them go. But each time we bring to bear our willingness to face and release them, their hold on us is lessened and they become less solid seeming and more unsubstantial. Gaps of deep stillness open up in what seemed to be an unbroken, self-defining stream of thoughts and emotions. Bright awareness arises in us and we “see” through those gaps to That Which Is “beyond this human mind” and glimpse the Pure witnessed to in theScripture of Great Wisdom,where there is “no form, sensation, thought, activity or consciousness…”. For that time in deep meditation we “break the bonds of clinging to both body and mind” and there, we know, is our True Self, beyond the dualities of this relativistic material world. And the longer we train and the more we meditate the gaps become more frequent and longer.
Of course, at some point we must emerge back into the relativity of the material world and its needs and distractions. But we remember. And that visceral memory compels us to want to stay true to It. And the Precepts guide us in daily life in turning back to It again and again when our humanity inevitably asserts itself. It becomes the spiritual “cosmic background radiation” that permeates everywhere in the universe and in all things, including ourselves. It is not something we acquire, it is waking up to That Which Is already there, always there, waiting patiently for us to realize It.