Essen­tial Zen Lessons — part 2

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-vored-for items included “com­mu­ni­cat­ing and relat­ing” and “sex­u­al­ity and sensuality.”

Wad­dya mean wake up! I am awake!

Why don’t you ever believe me?

I was work­ing with a client yes­ter­day, and much of what we talked about, and did in Body­work, was both fas­ci­nat­ing and pre­dictable. Pre­dictable, because she’s doing the same thing she always does to make her life mis­er­able. Fas­ci­nat­ing because she’s quite bright and totally “gets” what we were talk­ing about.

Doing it? That’s another story.

At one point, she said, “You make all of this sound so simple!”

Dar­bella and I talked about that one after­ward. Dar made (as usual) a good point. Pay­ing atten­tion to the present moment is both sim­ple and hard, and is nei­ther sim­ple nor hard.

It only gets to “sim­ple” or “hard” when we get involved with think­ing about doing, as opposed to doing.

Dar men­tioned a reac­tion she has to one of our Zen teach­ers, who often talks about how “hard” Zen prac­tice is. He sighs a lot. Dar’s com­ment was, “It’s not hard, and it’s not easy. It’s just whether, in this moment, you do it or not.”

How Zen of her.

One of the “rules about sit­ting” is: “WHEN you dis­tract your­self by fol­low­ing a thought, bring your atten­tion back (to the breath, to the moment, to noth­ing… to what­ever is “up” right then and there.)”

Notice the when, as opposed to if.

If los­ing focus was some­thing we are expected to get past, why the con­tin­ual reminder to sim­ply pay atten­tion again?

One of the chief dis­trac­tions is grasp­ing onto a sense of “this is hard.” In rela­tion­ship coun­selling, “This is hard” is short-hand for “Why the hell should I have to change when it’s his/her fault?” Hint: because the only thing you have even slight con­trol over is yourself.

4 — Drop Judge­ment

Yeah. I know. Impos­si­ble. None-the-less, let’s hold this one as a part of the dis­ci­pline, eh?

My open­ing sto­ries are all about judge­ment.
Hard, easy, good, bad, right, wrong, at fault, inno­cent,
all are judge­ments as opposed to state­ments of fact.

It is 28 degrees Cel­sius today is a state­ment. “Jeez, is it hot today” is a judge­ment. Deal­ing with aspects of life — birth, ill­ness, dis­abil­ity, death — is nei­ther hard, nor easy. What it is, is both pre­dictable and nec­es­sary.

Being present, using excel­lent com­mu­ni­ca­tion, releas­ing blocks, get­ting over one­self — again nei­ther easy nor hard.

It’s sim­ple, though.

Once all of the excuses are out of the way, there is this: am I doing it, or am I not? If I am not, I can start, or I can yell at myself.

See? Simple.

5 — Be Aware

Back in the good old days, The Haven pro­moted the 4 As — Aware­ness, Acknowl­edg­ment, Accep­tance, Action.

I just looked, and see they’ve added an A and a B. (Breath & Appre­ci­a­tion.) You can down­load a pdf of the key Haven model here.

Any­way, I sus­pect that much of what we talk about here can be framed within the con­text of the orig­i­nal 4 As.

Zazen

Zazen is the one and only method for Zen prac­ti­tion­ers to achieve what might be called ‘sim­ple awareness.’

This is aware­ness unclouded by judgement.

Mostly, peo­ple are spec­tac­u­larly unaware of any­thing beyond their sto­ries and judgements.

My prin­ci­pal goal is to get you to devote your life to aware­ness, which then leads to the other three As.

Now, of course, within aware­ness is notic­ing my attempt to go non-present.

I call these NPMs — non-present moments.

Bare, or sim­ple aware­ness is aware­ness unclouded by excuses, ego, or blame. Items that come into aware­ness are ‘as they are,’ and are wor­thy of sim­ple notice.

6 — Acknowledge

Acknowl­edge­ment sort of means to know you know.

The dic­tio­nary sug­gests, “admit­ting to know­ing some­thing” as a def­i­n­i­tion. Stress on admit.

The Zen prac­ti­tioner, as she notices the aris­ing of thoughts, judge­ments, “dual think­ing,” freely admits to what is hap­pen­ing in the mind. But the essen­tial acknowl­edge­ment is this:

This is me, sep­a­rat­ing myself for the actual expe­ri­ence of the sit­u­a­tion at hand (the moment,) as I turn my thoughts into some­thing more sig­nif­i­cant than the sit­u­a­tion itself.

As I notice, and then acknowl­edge what I am doing, I find myself able to choose.

Some­times, I really, really want to blame and judge.

There is noth­ing wrong (at all!) with any choice, so long as it is a con­scious choice, AND I am will­ing to accept copm­plete respon­si­bil­ity for my choice. We’ll get to action in a minute, but at this stop­ping point, let me be clear: we have almost no con­trol over what we think, and there­fore our thoughts are harm­less and blame­less. What we do with our thoughts is another mat­ter entirely.

7 — Acceptance

Reread the intro, and the “it’s hard” stuff. This is NON-acceptance. This is how we get up into our heads and excuse our stu­pid­ity and laziness.

Accep­tance is qui­etly and com­pletely own­ing who I am and what I do, (i.e. have NPMs) — with­out judg­ing “hard,” “bad,” what­ever. As I accept that I do have NPMs repeat­edly, I can have it, notice it, and let it go. As opposed to the relent­less search for the “reasons.”

Accep­tance is liv­ing with your­self as you are, warts and all, with­out judge­ment, blam­ing, or look­ing for the “rea­son.” “Why am I in this mess?” is a com­mon coun­selling ques­tion. The answer is, “Because of choices you made, and because, some­times, shit hap­pens.” Rumi­nat­ing end­lessly is not help­ful. Accep­tance of the real­ity of this “now” is essential.

Call me silly, but wouldn’t it be sim­pler

to just untie the laces?

8 — Action

The first 3 As lead to action. Action, as I men­tioned last arti­cle, is of the “Chop Wood, Carry Water” vari­ety. Going into your head to make your­self more mis­er­able is not an action. Get­ting off your butt and doing some­thing mean­ing­ful, now, is what action is all about.

This is where the rub­ber hits the road, so to speak. All I can do is what I can do.

My actions need to be clean and pure from, you guessed it, within the con­tainer of my belief system.

In other words, my actions match what I say that I believe to be true. My only job is to bring myself under my own discipline.

This week, con­tem­plate your rela­tion­ship to points 4 to 8. Com­mit to see­ing the truth of you, and from there to being you by liv­ing and enact­ing you. Moment by moment, of course!