Essen­tial Zen Lessons

I’m think­ing that, for the sum­mer at least, I’ll write some lists that fit the sur­vey results from a month or so ago. There were two 98% win­ners — “Zen Liv­ing,” and “Zen Hints and Tips.” The other highly-voted-for items included “com­mu­ni­cat­ing and relat­ing” and “sex­u­al­ity and sensuality.”

I made it! I’ve arrived! I’m the best!”

I came close to dig­ging in to the June 2008 cover story of Psy­chol­ogy Today - “Dare To Be Your­self.” The prob­lem, as I read the arti­cle, is that it is decid­edly results ori­ented, as some­thing from a West­ern per­spec­tive would be. While it describes liv­ing with flex­i­bil­ity and flow,

it’s clear that such an approach is seen as a tech­nique to get some­where — to being authen­tic, (What­ever the hell that means…)

Well, gag me with a spoon.

“I want to be authen­tic, real, who I really am,” is often short-hand for, “I want to con­tinue to do stu­pid stuff that doesn’t work, and get oth­ers to behave, so that I can be happy.”

Because they believe that the solu­tion to their prob­lems lies out­side of them, they are frus­trated and angry — and can’t quite place their fin­ger on why.

It’s why so many peo­ple are so sappy when they “fall in love.” There’s all this emo­tional vibra­tion going on, and it’s all so greatly dis­tract­ing from the under­ly­ing dissatisfaction.

Zen is all about “is-ness.”

In other words, what is going on inside of you — all of the mess, and game play­ing, blam­ing and drama, — IS your life. As is what­ever your body is doing, moment by moment. To again quote the amaz­ing Taoist, Stew­art Wilde, “The way it is, is the way it is.”

I would say, “The way it is, is only the way it is.”

There is no get­ting past who we are, thereby achiev­ing some state of bliss where every­thing is, well, “just per­fect!” Per­fect is just one more goal — one more “judg­ment point.”

Despite the pre­vail­ing west­ern myth that the goal of life is hap­pi­ness, in Zen, we might sug­gest that being present is all that is pos­si­ble. Or per­haps bet­ter put, aware­ness of being present — it’s not that being present is a choice, after all.

Here’s the first three Essen­tial Zen Lessons.

1 — Be Present

If pres­ence is all there is, why is it so hard to be so? Well, let me re-introduce you to your egoic mind structure.

For me, the odd part about the Psy­chol­ogy Today arti­cle is that the writer is caught in the “authen­tic self loop.” This is the idea that peo­ple are actu­ally both real and “sub­stan­tial.” Our minds do this to us by con­struct­ing sto­ries of past and pro­jec­tions of future.

Exist­ing in the land of giants…

Here is a “pic­ture of me, age 8 or there­abouts.” Who is this per­son? Does he exist? Where? If you say, “That is you then, and you are now who you are now,” there is no way to prove that. You’d say, “Yeah, but genet­i­cally you are the same.” No way to prove that. Even if you had a genetic sam­ple from “then,” there’s no way to prove it came from “me, then.”

None, not one, of my cells is the same as his.

In other words, the pic­ture cap­tures a frame in a movie.
He existed like that in that moment,

and never before or since.

If I think I am actu­ally him, then I begin to con­coct sto­ries about him, back then. I actu­ally have no clue about what this pic­ture is. I rec­og­nize the chick to my right, and she seems to be col­lect­ing the offer­ing at school, which makes no sense. So, I’d have to invent a story.

Which is what you do, every time you describe yourself.

Pres­ence is bring­ing your atten­tion, con­tin­u­ally, to the frame of the movie that is “now.” In this sense, it would be Zen-ish to say that we are processes as opposed to fixed real­i­ties. In each moment, with each breath, we come and go, are born, and die, and are born again. Hard con­cept, since all those mem­o­ries and sto­ries seem real.

A cou­ple the other day assured me that they would always be “in romance” with each other. They imag­ined that they had been “in love / romance” for 8 months, after all. Since they were pre­tend­ing they could pre­dict the future, I invited them to remem­ber the begin­ning of other rela­tion­ships, when they had felt the same about past lovers. They briefly looked sheep­ish, then spoke in uni­son, “This time, it’s dif­fer­ent!” (Of course, they are right, but for another resa­son entirely!)

Des­per­a­tion here, folks. I feel good right now, and I want this to last for­ever, while get­ting “bet­ter and bet­ter.” Yet, there is no for­ever. There is just this moment, and my choice of how I will be in it. To think of the future is per­verse, as it actu­ally takes me away from this moment, and “here, now” is al there ever is.

2 — Drop Clinging

Sure, I’m speak­ing improb­a­bil­i­ties. It’s not pos­si­ble to never cling. (Dou­ble neg­a­tive! Wow!) We can notice and let go, however.

Cling­ing is actu­ally 3-fold. We pull what we want toward us, we push away what we hate, and we are neu­tral to much of our expe­ri­ence. Oddly, all of this is done in our heads

Want­ing more is the state of men­tally grasp­ing onto some­thing plea­sur­able as opposed to expe­ri­enc­ing the now.

Push­ing away is men­tally cre­at­ing abhor­rent sto­ries, as opposed to expe­ri­enc­ing the now.

Being dis-interested is escap­ing into, you guessed it, your head, where you judge that your fan­tasies are “bet­ter” than expe­ri­enc­ing the now.

Cling­ing is all about think­ing that your thoughts about liv­ing are bet­ter than actu­ally doing liv­ing. Cling­ing is thus a judge­ment — a men­tal eval­u­a­tion of some­thing past — a set­ting up of sce­nar­ios that are then com­pared with the now.

And the now is found to be lacking!

All fight­ing is caused by this. I have a thought about how you should be, I judge that you are not as I want you to be, and there­fore, if you love me, I decide that you should want to fix your­self so I can have my fan­tasies match real­ity.

In other words, I judge that how I imag­ine you should be is more impor­tant than how you are.

Yet, when some­one wants you to match their belief of how you should be, you get all bent. Weird, eh?

Engage­ment in the here and now is sim­ple presence.

This, then this, then this. No thought of “all of this should be dif­fer­ent.” That’s cling­ing to a thought. Instead, do some­thing dif­fer­ent, do what you are doing, or leave. Way too sim­ple, eh? After all, you are here to tell every­one else what to do, right?

Get over it.

3 — Simplify

We cre­ate com­plex­ity to build a sense of impor­tance and drama. I see this with clients all the time. They report some event, and they blow it up to such “large­ness” I’m sur­prised the thought doesn’t explode. They’ve put hours and hours (some­times years and years) into the story, and there are twists and turns and pauses and tears and lots of drama.

I used to do this a lot. I’d go off to my ther­a­pist, Glo­ria, and tell her one of mine. She’d lis­ten, shake her head, and say,

“Cute, but stupid.”

I’d shake my head and let go of the story.

I’m not smart. I’m just good at drop­ping my drama. I see me hurt­ing myself and decide, for this moment, not to.

Ram Dass used to talk about “Nobody Spe­cial train­ing.” Same thing. We want to be sig­nif­i­cant, noticed, impor­tant. We’re not. No one is.

Story sim­pli­fi­ca­tion is this: “This is it. How it is right now is how it is, and in the next moment it will be that. Me too.”

This does not pre­clude action. It’s like me and Glo­ria. Her action is to point out my inat­ten­tive story mak­ing, and to invite me back to the present. It’s a short, sweet approach to ther­apy and life. If she chose to engage in debate about my sto­ries, she’d join me in mag­ni­fy­ing them.

Sim­pli­fi­ca­tion extends to all of our actions. It’s the mean­ing of “Chop Wood, Carry Water.” When chop­ping, chop. When writ­ing, write. When work­ing, work. Let go of the need to bore your­self or dis­tract your­self. Do what the present moment requires.

More next week!