This Week's Article:
The Zen Lifestyle -
As a Little Child
On September 25, I started a new series of articles about Zen understandings. Herein is my peculiar twist on how a "Simple Presence" approach to life might be of use to you.
Zen flies in the face of conventional "wisdom." For example many are the stories of Zen masters, in the middle of life-threatening situations—stopping to admire (or eat!) a strawberry. The western sensibility of ""urgency and importance" is disturbed by such stories. And yet, coming to a full stop is a useful way to begin to approach our lives differently.
A client recently described how a friend of his often commented about watching his three-year-old child. Right in the middle of something, the child would do a "full stop," glaze over, and then snap back. The friend thought the child making a new neurological connection.
I thought, "perfect story for Into The Centre!"
Because, of course, this is how children behave.
As adults, we have lost access to our own past. None of us remember the process of being a child. We do not remember what it was like to be born into a world about which we had no preconceived notions. In other words, we were born as tabula rasa – blank slates. Now, some brain biologists argue that we actually do have some innate understandings hard-wired in – but the jury's out as to how much and what.
No, we were born as receptors. Our sense organs were open to some degree (for example, it takes months for a baby's eyes to truly focus) and our brains were like sponges. We began to assimilate data – but it was raw data. In other words, it lacked meaning.
I love watching The Amazing Race. Mostly what I amuse myself over is how dumb some of the contestants are. They are plopped down in a new culture, and it's like watching their brains short out. Because they are experiencing something new, this particular category of contestant freaks out. Rather than experimenting with the new experience, and to work at coming to a "culturally relevant" action, they simply judge. So you hear, "How can people live like this? Why don't they speak English? These people are awful!"
The people who eventually win the show take exactly the same data, recognize they do not know what it means in the present context, and do what they have to, to figure out what the situation means to the people for whom it has meaning.
To go back to infants and children for a moment. Data comes in. Initially, and perhaps for three or four years, the child must turn to adults for interpretation. Remember that the child has no context to judge a new experience. Context develops over time. So the parent I described above is accurate, as the child was "zoning out" to categorize. The "zoning out," was the child turning off external stimulation to make a neural connection between and old experience and a new one. Or, in the case of entirely new data, to create an internal representation of the new experience.
What the experience means is up for grabs.
Meaning is, as I just said, initially supplied by adults. We initially learn what others believe to be so, and because we, as children, have no other beliefs, we buy into the belief system of our "tribes." Because nothing predates this interpretation, it becomes our deeply rooted belief system. Everything, from then on, is vetted through this primary belief system.
This happens without questioning. We believe our foundational truths are true, because we believe them to be true.
These baseline beliefs are not based upon evidence.
They are based upon … well … nothing!
For this reason, Buddha said,
"Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many. Do not believe in anything simply because it is found written in your religious books. Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders. Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations. But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it."
This is not what we westerners do. Most have never questioned their baseline beliefs. And then, to complicate matters,we think that what we believe is also true. We believe it so fervently that, even though what we believe leads to suffering and pain for ourselves and others, we still believe it and do it. It's as if our heads harden at age five, and that's it. "Here is who and what and how I am, and there is nothing I can do about it!"
Well, yes, there is an alternative, although it is difficult.
It is called innocence.
The child explores life. You have seen children running off in all directions. They are doing that because they crave new experiences. They know that the only way to learn new things is to have new experiences. They are not shut off (yet!!) from their curiosity. They tend to rush right in, and damn the consequences.
This is childish innocence. It is reckless and engaged in without reason. Child-like innocence, on the other hand, Happens when a reasoning and functional adult explores in openness and freedom – and the freedom is freedom from prejudice.
Prejudice simply means "pre-judgment." It is the posture that I already know what something means, what it will feel like, what will happen, how someone "always is." It is a load of crap, but we believe it. And this prejudice keeps us from experiencing life in with child-like innocence.
The monk in this card from the Osho Zen Tarot deck is demonstrating what I am talking about. His engagement with the praying mantis on his finger is total. He is fully and deeply present in the moment, without prejudice that he "ought" to be doing something else or having some other experience.
And he is clearly happy.
One mark of the state of innocence and bliss is a smile. It is, in a sense, getting the joke that my life is what I make of it, and is precisely how I define it.
My experiences are devoid of meaning, until I add them, and there is no requirement that I do so!
I can "be" in my experience. (And the joke is, you are in your experience. You cannot escape your experience. Torturing yourself and suffering over your experience is a function of judgment and prejudice, and it entirely optional.) If I am "in" my experience, then whatever is going on is simply what is going on.
Life is incredibly short, and much of it is wasted in endless justifications for staying stuck in old thought patterns and habits. The old, old stuff is not removable. It's just there. But, it's also there at the level of other stuff from way back when.
For instance, when you were four, there was an absolute rule that you were never, ever, to cross a street without holding an adult's hand. I trust you were able to move past that rule by now! Yet, that "life or death" rule is still in there, and likely no one ever told you specifically to disregard it. You outgrew it.
It is now time to outgrow all of the crap you shovel that keeps you stuck and miserable.
Not by rooting it out or by getting someone's permission to let go. You outgrow it by acting in another way. Metaphorically, it is now up to you to look both ways before crossing, but to cross the damn street!
Growing up means letting go of childish things. Letting go of what is not working, by doing what does work. Having experiences because they are available to you. Having full body relationships because you want to. Having new thoughts and new experiences each and every moment. And this is only possible by being in the moment (you are anyway!) with attention and focus.
Do it, now. And enjoy the adventure!
