Essen­tial Zen Lessons — part 3

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.”

“Now I can do anything!”

I’ve got a cou­ple of ideas for today’s arti­cle, and it’s really great that they’ve come from reader com­ments.

By the way — I really do appre­ci­ate it when you leave com­ments on the blog — I see them, read them, appre­ci­ate them, and also respond on the blog.

Present Moment Application

So, the first thing I want to talk about today is the appli­ca­tion of the four A’s. This, of course, is taken from one of the points in last week’s arti­cle.

The four A’s describe the inter­nal process of work­ing through our expe­ri­ences. Step-by-step, we work through Aware­ness, Acknowl­edg­ment, Accep­tance, and Action.

But this tech­nique, like all tech­niques, is prone to a very sim­ple misuse.

I know this is like beat­ing a dead horse, but we are all prone to exter­nal­ize what is going on in our lives. I sup­pose there’s another arti­cle here — how we give our­selves credit for our suc­cesses and blame oth­ers for our fail­ures — but what I really want to talk about, ever again, is the con­cept of total per­sonal self respon­si­bil­ity.

This idea is key to what I write about, and key to Zen. It’s the idea that all I can know is me — my thoughts, inten­tions, feel­ings — and all I can do is what I do. What oth­ers are doing only has an impact on me if I choose to cre­ate an impact.

Here’s the misuse:

When apply­ing a new tech­nique, we may eas­ily “get” the lan­guage, but mess with the intent.

The point of every­thing we talk about is to develop a state of detached aware­ness. What, you might ask, is it detached from? It is detached from the need to cre­ate an emo­tional reac­tion that leads us away from sim­ple obser­va­tion of self and the experience.

The four A’s are inti­mately inter­twined with the pro­noun “I”.

This is dia­met­ri­cally opposed to what I notice when I teach this tech­nique to my clients. They’ll say stuff like,

“So I am aware that my boyfriend is a jerk, and I fully acknowl­edge what a big jerk he is, and I even accept but he’ll always be a jerk, where I get stuck is what to do now.”

To the casual observer, my client is per­fectly fol­low­ing the tech­nique, as she lists off the four aspects. She, in other words, “gets” the language.

But it doesn’t take great wis­dom to see that the sub­ject (the use of the 3^rd per­son pro­noun) of the 4 A’s totally misses the mark. She’s using the tech­nique to main­tain blam­ing and externalizing.

Rather than end­lessly restate the obvi­ous, here’s a bet­ter appli­ca­tion of the technique.

“So, I am aware that I have a ten­dency to judge my boyfriend, and I acknowl­edge my judg­men­tal streak. I fur­ther accept that this is a part of my per­son­al­ity, and is an issue I want to work on, so it is my inten­tion (this is how I will act) to notice, and stop myself , when I go into judging.”

An entirely dif­fer­ent ket­tle of fish, eh?

You see, at the end of the day, there’s really no way to deter­mine whether or not one’s boyfriend is a jerk, or in any way to blame him for any­thing going on within the observer.

I have one client that I’ve been work­ing with for a few years now, and I’d sus­pect that 90% of our time is spent with her try­ing to con­vince me of what a ter­ri­ble hus­band she has. I sus­pect that she’s really look­ing for total agree­ment with her self diag­no­sis of how hard done by she is. It’s a strange dance we do. She pulls out end­less exam­ples of her husband’s mis­be­hav­ior, and I remind her that he’s the same guy she mar­ried. I won­der what sat­is­fac­tion she gets from being the poor help­less vic­tim of the big, bad idiot. Who is prob­a­bly nei­ther big, nor bad, nor an idiot.

The prob­lem is that talk­ing about some­one else’s fault solves noth­ing. It just reaf­firms what we already believe. And end­lessly lec­tur­ing another per­son on their per­ceived faults, while using ever more sophis­ti­cated tech­niques, is still noth­ing more than bitch­ing, moan­ing, and complaining.

9 — the pro­noun is “I”

I am con­vinced that there is no eas­ier way to say this – your job is to pay atten­tion to you.

Now, of course, it’s easy to go to, “Yes, but that’s so self­ish!” I sus­pect peo­ple toss out the “self­ish” word as yet another way to stay focused com­pletely on oth­ers.

One of the chief lessons that comes from Zazen is the aware­ness of just how much crap our minds gen­er­ate. We’re always look­ing around, judg­ing, crit­i­ciz­ing, blam­ing. It’s what our minds do best. This does not change the point.

Noth­ing in your life changes if you don’t change it.

Pain doesn’t stop until you stop hurt­ing your­self. There may be a grim sat­is­fac­tion and blam­ing oth­ers, but all you get is that grim sat­is­fac­tion — noth­ing else changes — and there you sit, in a pile of mud of your own creation.

The solu­tion is end­less appli­ca­tion of the four A’s, using the pro­noun “I”. Here is who I am, here is what I am doing, here is what is work­ing for me, here is what needs to stop. And then… wait for it… you actu­ally have to do it!

10 — there is lit­tle we can know

I received a blog com­ment regard­ing last week’s arti­cle — and intrigued myself over the last sentence.

“When you don’t have that mind­set it’s a great chal­lenge to get your mind think­ing in a dif­fer­ent direc­tion as long as you know it will ben­e­fit you.”

The mind­set he was describ­ing is doing as opposed to just think­ing.

I’m not par­tic­u­larly inter­ested in notic­ing how the writer describes act­ing as “think­ing in a dif­fer­ent direc­tion” — what he is really describ­ing is get­ting caught in a thought loop that goes nowhere — and how dif­fi­cult it can be to escape this pattern.

What I want to say some­thing about is the last clause:
“… as long as you know it will ben­e­fit you.”

Life in the 21^st cen­tury, espe­cially in the West is built on the flimsy foun­da­tion of (even­tual) reward. Vir­tu­ally every­thing we buy is sold on the basis of all the great things that are going to happen-eventually-if we buy the product.

It’s like the really old joke (see above photo.)

Two New­fies are vis­it­ing Toronto. They dis­cover they have a five dol­lars between them. They really want to have a bunch of great expe­ri­ences. One of the guys takes the saw­buck and goes into a drug­store. He walks out with a box of tam­pons. He says, “Prob­lem solved!” His friend says, “What are you talk­ing about?” The guy says, “I saw it on TV. You can go horse­back rid­ing with Kotex, you can go swim­ming with Kotex, you can go danc­ing with Kotex…”

Any­way, it’s really silly to think that we can antic­i­pate future benefit.

When we teach the com­mu­ni­ca­tion model, we often hear, “I’m will­ing to try this, but only if my part­ner does too.” And then they go on to explain that in the past, their part­ner has let them down, and there­fore will likely let them down again, and they don’t want to put all that effort into learn­ing how to com­mu­ni­cate before they can be totally assured that it’s all going to work out the way they imag­ine it might.

We demand assur­ances because we fear death — the great­est uncer­tainty of all

Most of us hate think­ing about dying, and do what­ever we can to avoid the sub­ject. We even use euphemisms for death — “passed away,” “moved on,” say­ing, “I lost my mother,” to which I often reply, “Do you want help look­ing for her?”

Because of this innate fear of the inevitable, many are end­lessly look­ing for assur­ances and secu­rity. We’re will­ing to stay stuck in deadly sit­u­a­tions — deadly for our hearts, deadly for our souls — if some­one can­not or will not promise us in advance that doing some­thing dif­fer­ent is going to make it all better.

And, of course, no one can.

John Lennon had it right when he sang, “Life is what hap­pens while we’re busy mak­ing other plans.” Within a very short time of record­ing this line, he was shot and killed by a deranged fan. There are no assur­ances, about any­thing! This is just the way it is.

So the impor­tant ques­tion is, what can I do right now to fully and com­pletely live my life in this moment?

It is impos­si­ble to know now what will ben­e­fit me in the future.

You might have to wrap your head lit­tle bit to get around this one, but imag­in­ing an out­come and expe­ri­enc­ing an out­come are absolute oppo­site things.

So, let’s go back to the idea of the com­mu­ni­ca­tion model, or the four A’s —

You can sit there and think about what might pos­si­bly hap­pen were you to use either or both of these tech­niques. You can draw pic­tures in your head, have con­ver­sa­tions with imag­i­nary peo­ple, think about out­comes, think about dif­fer­ences, and at the end of the day you know pre­cisely nothing.

Or, you can do the com­mu­ni­ca­tion model, you can use the four A’s, and then you can see what actu­ally hap­pens. If you like it, do more of it. If it doesn’t work, do some­thing else.

Doing things this way is direct and sim­ple. You do some­thing, you eval­u­ate the results. No one else is involved — it’s just you observ­ing you. The more you apply the tech­nique, the eas­ier it gets, and the more inter­est­ing the results become.

This is so with any­thing we learn — it’s hard until it’s simple.

Today’s les­son is this. Zen liv­ing is not an intel­lec­tual pur­suit — it’s a way of act­ing and being. When sit­ting, you sit. When com­mu­ni­cat­ing, you com­mu­ni­cate. When eat­ing, you eat. Noth­ing we do is for an even­tual ben­e­fit, because there is no even­tual. There is just the now in which I act, and now in which I observe the results of my action. No assur­ances. No manip­u­la­tion. No games. Just liv­ing with attention.