Beyond Beliefs

Join us for the remain­ing ses­sion of the Tele­series on Wed. 8PM ET, 5PM PT on 6/24

It’s not only my tail that’s caught…

Today, I want to offer you another sec­tion of my great new book, Half Asleep in the Bud­dha Hall:

Zen Liv­ing: The Prin­ci­pal Paradox

I received this ques­tion: “When you write, you say that per­sonal self-responsibility is key. Then you say, ‘Drop your ego,’ or per­sonal iden­tity. Aren’t these contradictory?”

Yes. No. Both. Neither.

Pon­der: Wuzu Fayan said, “For exam­ple, it’s [enlight­ened liv­ing] just like a great cow pass­ing through a lat­ticed win­dow.
Her head, horns, and four legs have passed through.
Why is it that her tail can’t pass through?”

Think about that one, for a moment, before read­ing on.

Per­sonal self respon­si­bil­ity is often con­fused with egotism

When I say, “I am com­pletely respon­si­ble for my expe­ri­ence,” I do not mean, “It’s all about me.”

“It’s all about me” is actu­ally a form of ‘dis-ease.’

Many peo­ple think that the world isn’t treat­ing them right. I hear this one espe­cially as I coun­sel cou­ples. There they sit, bale­fully glar­ing at each other, vainly hop­ing I’ll declare a win­ner. Each rat­tles off a litany of what the other is doing wrong. Some­times, one or the other will tell me, with great right­eous­ness, “Every­one knows that rela­tion­ships should be easy. When you find the right per­son, (s)he will meet all your needs, with­out ask­ing, and every­thing will be perfect.”

This is ego­tism. Ego­tism is not the same as self-responsibility.

Ego­tism: You expect or demand that oth­ers put you first. This hap­pens because you think you are so, so spe­cial. This, how­ever, is silly in the extreme. It doesn’t mat­ter that your par­ents doted on you as an infant (hint: they had to or you’d have died…) or that they told you that you could be or do any­thing, and that you were spe­cial and impor­tant. Grow­ing up and wak­ing up requires that we under­stand the following—

Always remem­ber that you’re unique.
Just like every­one else.

See the Zen there? It’s a para­dox. Every per­son who ever lived is unique —even to the level of fin­ger­prints. Where we go off the rails is in think­ing that I alone am unique. This emphat­i­cally lev­els the play­ing field.

Self-responsibility is the cease­less action of walk­ing a path. The wise path, the one path, in all cases, is drop­ping the ego.

What does this mean?

Drop­ping the ego is the foursquare recog­ni­tion that, despite being unique, I also am no one and noth­ing (no thing) spe­cial. I there­fore guide myself along a path that brings moment-by-moment self aware­ness, by ‘sim­ply being.’

A Help­ful Haiku

Mat­suo Basho (1644–1694)—was a Zen monk who trav­elled across Japan, teach­ing and writ­ing more than a thou­sand haiku.

This road –
No one is on it.
The autumn evening.

Another trans­la­tion–

No one
walks along this path
this autumn evening.

The dumb path is this: some­one (me! me! me) walks along the path, and every­one is envi­ous of my every step!

The wise path: no one walks this path, as the path is walked. There is no walker. There is walk­ing.

Get it?

So, what’s up with the cow and the lattice?

I read this Zen story and I liked it. A cow has climbed through a win­dow. Almost the entire cow has passed through to the other side, yet the tail remains lodged firmly in the window.

Why? Because it’s the part of him­self that he’s caught on! Get it?

The goal of Zen liv­ing, through med­i­ta­tion and con­tem­pla­tion, is to dis­cover what you are catch­ing your­self on. The tail that catches you is per­sonal and unique, and arises as a result of your ‘embod­ied–ness.’ Per­haps it is the desire for sta­tus and recog­ni­tion. Per­haps it is pos­ses­sions or wealth. It might be any­thing you dis­tract your­self with—food, sex, roles. It may be your belief in the real­ity of your ego-identity. It could be any­thing at all.

Rec­og­niz­ing your ‘stuck tail’ is walk­ing the road of enlight­en­ment. It reminds us to exam­ine our moti­va­tions and actions. If we act with­out attach­ment and with­out ego, with­out yield­ing to the temp­ta­tion to bend to the will of the world out­side of us, we are awake.

What is my ‘tail’ caught on—what am I dis­tract­ing myself with?

Per­sonal self-responsibility is con­tin­u­ing to walk, no mat­ter what seems to be hap­pen­ing around you or to you. The dis­ci­pline is to ask, “What of this is mine, and what of this is out of my con­trol?” (Hint: any­thing out­side of ‘you,’ is, by def­i­n­i­tion, out of your control.)

It’s tempt­ing to waste your life try­ing to make oth­ers responsible—for your hap­pi­ness, for your wealth, for what you know, for your feel­ings. It’s tempt­ing to demand that oth­ers and ‘the world’ treat you as you want to be treated. What you might be notic­ing is that this is not work­ing, never works, and (you’ll have to trust me on this part) never will work.

The eas­i­est way to begin this prac­tice is to mon­i­tor your body for tight­ness. Notice when you are upset­ting your­self (over your caught tail…) by see­ing where, in your body, you feel the tight­ness of “upset.” Make a pact with your­self to mon­i­tor that part of your body for the next 30 days. When you notice your­self tight­en­ing, say (to your­self, so they don’t drop a net on you…) “Caught tail!” Then, have sev­eral breaths, cen­tre your­self, and come up with a strat­egy that will pro­duce the sen­sa­tion of “unstuck.” Repeat. Endlessly.

Walk­ing the Wis­dom path.

Com­mit to walk­ing a path that leads nowhere, walked by no one. One step and one step, this path is always walked in the now-here, (because there can be no des­ti­na­tion, only the walk, until, para­dox­i­cally, you reach the end for all of us—death.)

This wis­dom path is lived with atten­tion to every detail, every interpretation—yet with the recog­ni­tion that ‘no one’ is walk­ing, ‘no one’ is inter­pret­ing. Think­ing that there is a ‘you’ in all of this is your ‘stuck tail’—your ego iden­ti­fy­ing with the role of inter­preter, walker.

I know. What the heck is he talk­ing about?

My intent is to sug­gest let­ting go of your present way of see­ing and being, so that you might self-less-ly walk the ‘wis­dom path.’ Yet, noth­ing changes in the ‘real’ world. You still have to make a liv­ing and have a life.

So what does change? Your focus, atti­tude, and your com­mit­ment. Instead of mind­less­ness, or grip­ing, or com­plain­ing, you do what you do— you attend to right now—here, and here alone. You chop wood, carry water, with total, mind­ful attention.

And then, as your ego pops up, smile and think, ‘caught tail.’ Let go, give your­self a shake, and go back to playing—being.

Or, you can choose to keep pre­tend­ing that any­one cares, and that res­cue is at hand. 95% of the pop­u­la­tion buys into that delu­sion. Drop me a line if this delu­sion works out for you, eh?

I sus­pect that ‘no-one’ will reply…

Want more? Buy the book already!

Sec­ondly, I received the fol­low­ing ques­tion on last week’s blog post:

This arti­cle was great and I am really enjoy­ing this Zen expe­ri­ence and look for­ward to your arti­cles how­ever there is one thing that I just can’t seem to grasp and need some help in clar­i­fy­ing it and just putting into per­spec­tive. Basi­cally I’m won­der­ing about emo­tions or pref­er­ences. Is it ok to not care for a par­tic­u­lar indi­vid­ual or want to be around peo­ple that you find unpleas­ant? Or are we sup­posed to like every­one and be happy go lucky? And is it a judge­ment to not want to be around peo­ple who are always get­ting into trouble? 

The thing is, the issue is always about the judge­ment I am hav­ing about what I imag­ine is going on. This is dif­fer­ent from a pref­er­ence.

One of my favourite Zen writ­ers, Brad Warner, men­tioned some­where that he was quite insis­tent on a par­tic­u­lar zazen (seated med­i­ta­tion) style. From other stuff, I assume that Brad sits in Half or Full Lotus. He men­tioned some guy want­ing to do it some other way, and Brad insisted on his style.

Now, Dar­bella and I both sit Seiza pos­ture, which is kneel­ing while sit­ting on a cush­ion. This is our pref­er­ence. Now, if I were to sit with Brad, at his zendo, I would do my best to sit his way. I would still have my pref­er­ence, but not have and rigid­ity about it.

A judge­ment would be: “Brad doesn’t know what he’s talk­ing about! Kneel­ing is the best way, and I’m really smart, and besides, who is he to make me sit his way? He must be a really weird guy.” (This may actu­ally be so, which is why I like read­ing his stuff…)

Emo­tions are bod­ily reac­tions to what arises from thought. As such, they are nei­ther right nor wrong, good nor bad. What arises, arises. My job is to notice and to express, safely and quickly, and then get back to “sim­ply notic­ing.” This includes all emo­tions.

It is not my opin­ion that we are “sup­posed to” be any­thing, other than present. Cer­tainly not “happy go lucky,” or danc­ing about pre­tend­ing all is well, all the time. The prob­lem? Things are as they are, and some­times, things are decid­edly odd.

So, I do not want to pre­tend, ever, that any­thing is other than it is. For me.

How I see things is all about me. So, as we’ve been say­ing these last few arti­cles (for­ever, actu­ally,) every­thing is about how I choose to see it, describe it to myself, and how I then choose to act.

So, to answer your ques­tion: Move toward those things that you are attracted to, and away from those things that you find your­self repelled by. Do not cling to things you like, nor cling to your aver­sions and judgements.

No, it is not a judge­ment to not want to be around peo­ple who are always get­ting into trou­ble. It is a judge­ment to think there is “some­thing wrong with, or some­thing to be done by” these peo­ple. In other words, don’t spend time with them, but also let them go. It’s not your job to fix any­one. It’s your job to be present, moment by moment, with yourself.