The revolving door

Last night was one of those nights when I could think of a million reasons not to show up for practice at the Cambridge Zen Center. I’d spent the day juggling face-to-face and online teaching obligations, teaching classes at Framingham State then grading papers and submitting online grades between classes. It was (and still is) unseasonably cold and windy—blustery conditions perfect for catching a cold—and I’m still clogged and froggy from last week’s bronchitis. After tending the online graduate course that ended on Sunday, the online graduate course that started on Monday, and the three undergraduate classes that are ongoing, all I wanted to do yesterday afternoon was come home, plant myself on the couch with a book and a blanket, and not be bothered.

Instead, I came home, changed clothes, ate a quick dinner, then drove to Cambridge, where I took a quick, brisk walk to check out the neighborhood graffiti before heading to the Zen Center, spending the next three hours chanting, meditating, and walking, all in the golden glow of the Dharma room Buddha. Sometimes you need to get away from it all, and other times you need to get in touch with it all, tuning in rather than tuning out.

On hectic days like yesterday—too often, in other words, than I’d care to mention—working my day job feels like spinning in a revolving door, with students constantly coming and going while I go nowhere but ’round. I’ve taught face-to-face classes for nearly twenty years now, and I’ve taught online for ten, and I can’t begin to count the number of students I’ve worked with, much less the number of papers I’ve read, commented upon, and graded over those years. You collect one batch of papers; you hand back another. You read, hand back, then collect some more. When one semester ends, another begins: you read final papers, submit final grades, then promptly rewind and begin again, again, and again. Your students finish your class, take other classes, then graduate, moving on to whatever’s next while you, their teacher, keep revisiting the same lessons over and over and over. It’s a nonstop ritual that makes me dizzy just thinking about it.

When it feels like you’re spinning in circles, you have several options: namely, you can keep on spinning, or you can stop. It’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking your day job is more rote or repetitive than others’, but actually life itself is a revolving door: we wake, bathe, bring home the bacon, fry it up in a pan, clean up our mess, tend our kids or pets, plant ourselves on the couch with a book and blanket, then go to sleep, destined to repeat it again tomorrow. We are born, grow up, grow old, then die, stuck in the epic catastrophe of human life, a drama culminating with the dire trinity of old age, sickness, and death. Surely, we say to ourselves, there must be something more than this; surely, the Buddha said to himself, there has to be a way out.

Last night at the Zen Center, I reminded myself of something I’ve long known but constantly forget, time and again: it takes only a second to stop. Swept up in the rat race of your mundane life, you think the earth itself will stop spinning if you power down your laptop, shut off your phone, and step away from your to-do list…but having done these things, you realize nothing has changed but your own perspective. The emails are still there to be answered when you reboot your computer; the to-dos still beckon from their list. But you yourself can change; you yourself can re-charge.

From your dizzying perch atop life’s revolving door, it’s easy to grow queasy from the ceaseless swirl of activity we call life, but the second you step off that dizzy-go-round, the world slows and solidifies underfoot. This revolving door called life is filled to overflowing with discreet moments, each one marching in turn. You can grow sick from the spinning redundancy of it all, or you can zero in and focus on This Present Moment, then the next, then the next. Suddenly the cycle isn’t sickening but wonderful: a glorious procession of moments staged just for your own enjoyment, so don’t miss it.

Last night at the Zen Center, I had the same realization I always have at the Zen Center: why did I stay away so long? The rat race is always there, ready to welcome me back as soon as I return to it…but the rat race holds no power over me the second I decide not to run. There’s nothing more repetitive than spending three hours chanting, meditating, and walking, your own breath coming and going through the revolving door of your own body: inhale, exhale, repeat. The cyclic certainty of your workaday life is enough to drive you mad, and the cure is to reacquaint yourself with another kind of monotony: this breath, this body, this moment, each instant following the next like a foot stepping into its own footprint. It takes only a second—this second—to return to it.

 

Rinsing out the residue

Earlier today, I submitted two batches of end-term grades, and the rest of today and tomorrow, I’ll continue commenting on essay drafts from my FSU students. We’ve reached the point in the semester when I feel word-weary, too full of other people’s ideas, other people’s opinions, other people’s words. If there were a way to crack open my head and rinse out the residue of other people’s prose, I’d do it. Instead, I sit here and try to purify my brain by pumping in prose of my own.

Tonight I go to the Zen Center to lead Tuesday night long sitting. I always feel a surge of adrenaline before leading practice: as the head Dharma teacher, you’re responsible for making newcomers comfortable as well as making sure things go smoothly in the Dharma room. If the head Dharma teacher does her job, everyone else can meditate without wondering who is watching the clock, who is keeping track of interviews, or who will indicate when to walk, when to sit, or when to bow and chant at the end of the evening: all done. If the head Dharma teacher does her job, Tuesday night long sitting is a calm and quiet time, but if the head Dharma teacher doesn’t mind the details, an atmosphere of confusion rather than calm prevails.

The last time I led Tuesday night long sitting, a bunch of things went wrong. Although I arrived at the Zen Center early, I was late bringing tea to the teacher giving interviews…and since I’d made the wrong kind of tea, I had to bustle back to the kitchen to brew a second pot before finally arriving (late) to the meditation session I was supposed to be leading. While I was bustling around brewing tea, the order of people in the Dharma room waiting for interviews got screwed up, with everyone looking around nervously when the interview room bell rang: “Who’s next?”

What was wonderful, though, was how quickly even these tempests in a (late) teapot subsided. Having fretted before practice that Something Would Go Wrong, I did indeed drop a few proverbial balls…and in the end, everything was fine. When I brought the second pot of tea, the teacher giving interviews was genuinely grateful I’d taken the extra effort, and when the bell rang, people figured out who had the next interview. By the end of the night’s regular routine of sitting, walking, and sitting, everyone (myself included) had settled down and settled in. This seems to be the recurring pattern behind my Zen Center practice: beforehand, I worry myself with what-ifs, then once I’m there, everything works out fine. Even when things don’t go entirely according to plan, everyone is flexible and forgiving, and the ruffled waters quickly return to calm.

One of the things I tell newcomers at the Zen Center is that there’s no mistake you can possibly make that someone else (probably me) hasn’t made countless times before you…and every time, both the mistake-maker and the Zen Center itself has survived. I’ve yet to encounter someone who has died of embarrassment after making a mistake at the Zen Center, and as of yet, I’ve never died of embarrassment there, either.

In my tenure at the Zen Center, I have brewed the wrong tea, sung the wrong chants, eaten from the wrong bowl, bowed at the wrong time, sat in the wrong seat, walked the wrong way, fallen asleep, fallen down, farted, snored, cried, and said any number of wrong, idiotic, and inappropriate things. In response, I’ve been gently corrected, nudged, hugged, laughed at, and laughed. Never, though, have I self-destructed, and never have I (yet) managed to destroy the place. In grandma-gentle style, the folks at the Zen Center always seem to respond to mistakes with placid compassion: “Another mistake? No problem!”

So tonight, I’ll go to the Zen Center to rinse out the residue of other people’s (and my own) ideas, other people’s (and my own) opinions, and other people’s (and my own) words. Tonight at the Zen Center, I’ll probably make a mistake or two, but I won’t die of embarrassment. Instead, I’ll follow my breath, watch the clock, and keep track of the order of people waiting to have interviews with a teacher who rings a bell and drinks tea in the next room. That tea might come late, and it might take several pots before I brew the right kind. But the only way to make a second pot of tea is to completely pour out the first, rinsing out even the residue of “wrong.”

I illustrated today’s post with images from the graffiti-covered Wall at Central Square, which I shot last December.

 

Sharing silence

Last night I pulled myself away from my paper-piles to go to the Cambridge Zen Center. It’s been too long since I’ve been to Tuesday evening practice at the Zen Center, as the demands of a busier-than-usual semester have interfered with my best intentions. Although I’m still buried in end-term grading, last night I wanted to take a break from grading a seemingly endless supply of student papers (words piled atop more words) in order to share silence with old friends. It was a break I sorely needed.

In the aftermath of last week’s school shootings in Connecticut, there has been a lot of talk online, in the news, and elsewhere about important things: talk about grief and healing, talk about guns and violence, talk about mental illness and bullying. All of these are worthwhile topics that deserve thoughtful and ongoing conversation, but after a certain point, even these issues can become words piled atop more words.

As I was driving to the Zen Center last night, I felt overfull with words and ready simply to sit with sadness: my sadness, the city of Newtown’s sadness, and the sadness of the whole suffering, sentient world. There’s nothing words can do to explain or erase sadness: sometimes all you can do with your own or someone else’s heartache is sit and share silence with it, giving it a warm lap to curl up on, quiet, while it lulls itself to sleep.

 

The sound of rain

I’m back from a soggy dog-walk, with raindrops falling from gray-flannel skies; Reggie is dotted with the first crop of beggars ticks. Rainy days are good for staying home and grading, which is good since I have papers to read and classes to prepare. But right now now, I’m relishing a moment of calm before the day begins, even though the day has already long begun. I hear my upstairs-neighbor stirring, and occasionally I hear Reggie breathing as he rests in a soggy spot on the kitchen floor. And when I’m quiet, there is the background sound of rain — the world’s most soothing sound. When you stop and truly, deeply listen, what do you hear?

Listening is almost always calming, even when your surroundings are noisy. The Zen Center is in a city neighborhood, so there are always the sounds of passing traffic and noisy neighbors: auditory itches you want with all your being to scratch. And yet you train yourself not to scratch that itch, returning to the inner silence of meditation rather than chasing the distraction of outward stimuli. It’s not that you drown the sound out, as there is absolutely no aspect of pushing it away. Instead, you let the sound wash over you; you let it permeate and percolate through your being, remaining passive and receptive. You let your Self be dissolved by sound until there is no Hearer, only Hearing.

But that happens only occasionally. In the meantime, while you’re still human and humbled, you struggle with sounds, choosing the ones you like and railing against the ones you don’t. You play endless songs in your head, pumping psychic quarters into your own internal jukebox so it plays and replays your favorite songs, your favorite thoughts, and your favorite fantasies over and over.

Real, actual sound — the pops and thuds and slams of the tangible world around you — shake you out of your inner trance because these sounds drown out, for an instant, the inner radio that keeps chattering, humming, and buzzing through every minute of consciousness. One sound — Ha! — cuts through every sound like a blade through warm butter. The honk of a horn, the cry of a child, the bark of a dog: these sounds are precious — psychological lifesavers — because they burst the bubble of our inner fantasy.

This is why the Evening Bell Chant insists that listening to the sound of the Dharma room bell destroys hell: the waves of sound that wash over you and the vibrations of sensation that seep to your inner core bring you back to the heaven of Here and Now, where enlightenment, change, and compassion happen. Coming back to Here and Now, you automatically leave behind the hell of both Yesterday and Tomorrow. What is either one of these but an infinitely elusive, illusory dream?

The magic of a mantra doesn’t lie in its meaning but in its music. When you chant a mantra, its words resonate down to your very bones, your body becoming a vibrating vessel of truth and light. This sounds otherworldly, but it isn’t. It’s as near as your nose, as immediate as your ears, and as tangible as the toes which tingle with every chanted syllable, alive.

If you want to wake up, simply open your ears, and the singing Universe will serve as your alarm clock, tapping raindrops on your window to rouse you.

It is indeed raining in Keene today, but I wrote this entry last Thursday, on a morning when the sound of rain nicely resonated with the chapter on “Hearing” from Diane Ackerman’s Natural History of the Senses, which I’m re-reading with my Creative Nonfiction students. “The sound of rain” made for a good in-class writing prompt, and these scenes from Modica Way in Central Square, Cambridge make for good rainy-day visuals.

 

The long view

This morning on my way to the Cambridge Zen Center for mid-morning practice, I walked down the graffiti-covered alley known as Modica Way, as I usually do whenever I visit the Zen Center. I’ve showed you many individual images of the ever-changing graffiti on this wall, but I’ve been wanting to assemble a panoramic shot of the entire thing to give a truer sense of scale. It’s one thing to view something in pieces; it’s something else entirely to take a long view.

Giving Sunday morning consulting interviews at the Cambridge Zen Center feels a bit like stitching together a wide-angle panorama from the individual pictures of another person’s life. The folks who come into the interview room to ask me questions–or in many cases, just to talk–are often fixated on some individual aspect of their life: mainly, whatever problem is the most pressing right now. It’s human nature to zoom in on whatever is troublesome right now; because you’re so close to the problem, it seems overwhelming and huge. It’s difficult to step back and take a broad view, figuring out how this individual scene fits into the much longer play called Your Life.

As a Senior Dharma Teacher, a large part of my job in giving consulting interviews is to give newer practitioners a sense of perspective. Yes, right now Problem X might seem insurmountable, but having struggled with Problem X (or something similar) myself over the years, I can assure you it’s a passing problem. Just give it five, ten, fifteen years or more to marinate, stew, and simmer. This isn’t about the quick fix; it’s about slow growth. As my grandfather used to say about marriage, “Being married is easy. It’s only the first fifty years that are tough.”

I can’t count the number of times, for instance, that new practitioners have asked whether they are doing something “wrong” in meditation, claiming that the practice isn’t “working.” When I ask them what “working” would look like–how, in other words, they would know they’re doing meditation “correctly”–I usually get a vivid sense of what the person wants from their practice: they want meditation to make them calmer, happier, more blissful, etc. What is interesting about this, of course, is that meditation doesn’t really offer any of these things: if you’re meditating to become “more this” or “less that,” you’re missing the point of meditation, which is to make peace with what is. If you sit down to meditate only to realize how extremely scattered you are, you’re doing your meditation exactly right. Instead of getting rid of your scattered-ness, meditation means waking up and making nonjudgmental peace with it: “Right now in this place, I’m scattered. What’s it like, right now in this place, to Be Scattered?”

In the zoomed-in, closely cropped version, this view of meditation practice seems insane. Why would anyone in their right mind spend time making nonjudgmental peace with the very flaws they want to eliminate? If you want to become calm, why sit with a racing mind? If you want bliss, why sit and stew in your own miserable juices? The reason “why” emerges only in time, in the long, wide-angle view that takes years to develop. Sometimes, meditation feels good in the moment…but most of the time, you won’t realize until later how the seeds of self-acceptance have taken root in your psyche. Years later, after having struggled with and finally forgiven yourself, time and again, for your own scattered, stressed-out nature, you’ll notice yourself not getting so upset about it. Being scattered and stressed won’t be as much of a Big Deal because you’ll have perspective: “Oh, yeah. This is a passing mood. It comes, I fight against it, I eventually get tired and give up fighting, and it eventually leaves of its own volition.”

Once you recognize the patterns that repeat themselves through the overlapping pictures that stitch together into the panorama of your personality–once you recognize that you often fall into the same habits, obsessions, and behaviors Buddhists call “karma”–you’re one step closer to being free from it. Once you recognize the pattern (“Whenever I have one glass of wine, I end up drinking the whole bottle”), you’re that much closer to managing it (“I’m making a conscious decision not to drink that first glass”). But even after you’ve grown adept at recognizing and managing your karma, you still aren’t rid of it. The patterns don’t go away; you just see them more clearly. Your karma still wants that glass, that bottle, that brimming barrel of wine, and time and again, in each individual moment, you face that pattern and make peace with it. Yes, my mind wants alcohol; I’m consciously saying no. Yes, my mind wants to wander; I’m consciously bringing it back. This pattern will repeat five, five hundred, five million times, and you’ll train yourself through long practice: “Every time my mind wanders, I bring it back to the moment, to my breath, and I do it gently, with infinite patience and self-forgiveness…even when I’m not feeling patient or forgiving.”

It’s a habit, like my grandfather’s view of marriage, that takes a long time to cultivate…but that’s okay, because it’s the practice of a lifetime. In the short view, we’re all just beginners stumbling our way through a play without knowing our lines; in the long view, that play is a great cosmic dance that will lead, prompt, and nudge us, all in due time.

Click here for the complete photo set from this morning’s walk down Modica Way. For a larger view of the final panoramic picture, click here and scroll from left to right.

The panorama’s perspective is distorted toward the right side of the image: because my photo-editing software couldn’t stitch together the dozen-some photos I took, I had to merge these photos in batches, and the merge of the final two pictures reflects a different aspect-ratio than the previous merges of four pictures. Next time, I’ll know to assemble the panorama in even sets: a bit of perspective gained over time, with experience.

 

Lessons from the Coca-Cola Buddha

This past weekend, at the 2010 Master Sand Sculpting Competition at New Hampshire’s Hampton Beach, I came face-to-face with my new American idol: the Coca-Cola Buddha, the patron deity of appetite and abundance.

This wasn’t the first sand-sculpting competition I’d been to; last July, J and I checked out the crumbling masterpieces that remained weeks after the New England Sand Sculpting Festival at Revere Beach in East Boston. But among the various sculptures at that event, there was nothing even remotely Buddhist, so I wasn’t expecting to come face-to-face with divinity on the New Hampshire seacoast this weekend. Like any genuine spiritual experience, my Coca-Cola enlightenment came as a complete surprise.

In the interest of iconographic accuracy, I should note that the Coca-Cola Buddha isn’t technically the Buddha; he’s Hotei, a fat-bellied monk who carries a cloth bag filled with treats. If you’ve ever rubbed a Buddha-belly for good luck, you’ve had a close encounter with Hotei, the Buddhist equivalent of Santa Claus: a fat, jolly man who brings happiness wherever he goes.

Whereas the historical Buddha is an emblem of regal detachment, Hotei is a reminder of life’s sweet abundance. Buddhist monks live on alms, so a fat monk is one that is particularly well-loved. Because Hotei is such a happy, jolly fellow, his begging-bowl is always full, and he is happy to share that abundance with others.

Ultimately, it doesn’t really matter whether the Coca-Cola Buddha is the Buddha, as Hotei carries a bag full of lessons all his own. In his guise as the Coca-Cola Buddha, Hotei reminds us to fully enjoy life’s simple pleasures. Whereas the historical Buddha was a pampered prince who renounced his wealth and then experimented with various ascetic practices, you get the feeling that the Coca-Cola Buddha hasn’t said “no” a day of his life.

The historical Buddha eventually abandoned asceticism, deciding that the Middle Way of moderation was the proper spiritual path…and both Hotei and the Coca-Cola Buddha take the Middle Way one step further, suggesting it’s better to occasionally over-indulge and enjoy a soft-in-the-middle belly-laugh (and share that glee with others) than be a Seriously Religious sour-puss concerned only with philosophical intangibles. The Coca-Cola Buddha believes, in other words, that life is short, so have dessert first!

The Coca-Cola Buddha also reminds us to, in the words of a famous soft-drink slogan, obey your thirst. In a time when obesity has become an epidemic, it’s easy to view food and appetite through the lens of fear. As Michael Pollan argues convincingly in The Omnivore’s Dilemma, Americans suffer from a national eating disorder whereby we obsess more and more over the healthfulness of our food while simultaneously growing fatter and fatter; in the words of Raj Patel, we live in a world that is simultaneously stuffed and starved. Given conflicting medical reports about which foods are and aren’t good for us, it’s no wonder our mealtimes are often fraught with worry.

The Coca-Cola Buddha offers diet plan far more simple than even the most popular fad or fast: when you’re hungry, eat; when you’re thirsty, drink. This is the wisdom of intuitive eating, a philosophy embraced by Zen masters, psychologists, and self-help gurus alike.

Too often we allow our head or our heart to make our culinary decisions, eating (or abstaining) from a particular food because we think we “should” or smothering our emotions with aptly named comfort food. If you listen to your gut, however, your body will tell you loud and clear when you’re hungry and when you’re full. The Coca-Cola Buddha knows that our bellies are usually far smarter than our brains. While our brains send us to the kitchen in search of Chubby Hubby to distract us when we’re sad, anxious, or bored, the wisdom of our gut is eager to tell us how much food we really need. Once you’ve learned to listen to the wisdom of enough, then you can share that abundance with others.

Lastly, the Coca-Cola Buddha knows that appetite can be sated only in the moment, and only for oneself. I can dream, imagine, and anticipate the soothing refreshment of a cool drink, but that imagined idea won’t quench my thirst.

Several weekends ago, I gave consulting interviews at the Cambridge Zen Center, and in lieu of hot tea, the Head Dharma Teacher left a small pot of ice water in the interview room for me to drink. The day was steamy, so I was sweating beneath my heavy Dharma Teacher robes…and when I raised a cup of cool water to my lips, I was delighted to smell the tang of a lemon slice floating among ice cubes. Just like that, a cup of cold lemon-water was more refreshing than Nirvana, a full serving of Ahhhhhhh soothing my summer-shriveled cells. But as much as I try to describe the deep-seated satisfaction of enjoying a cool drink on a hot day, the only way you can “get” this experience is to go to your own kitchen and pour your own glass: drink up!

A long time ago in New York, a student questioned Zen Master Seung Sahn about the efficacy of mantra meditation: do I have to understand the words of a chant or mantra in order to benefit from repeating it? Seung Sahn insisted that only three things are important when you meditate upon a mantra: first, your reason for doing it; second, your faith that it will work; and third, your tireless effort to keep that mantra.

“So you can chant Coca-Cola all day long and it will work,” the student asked, amazed, and Zen Master Seung Sahn’s reply was even more amazing. “If someone tells you that the words Coca-Cola have power in them and you really believe that, then Coca-Cola will work for you.”

This is the timeless wisdom of Zen Master Seung Sahn, big-bellied Hotei, and the all-American Coca-Cola Buddha. This Present Moment is a brimming glass filled with both sweetness and sorrow, and only you can belly up to the bar called Life to savor it, moment to moment, good to the last drop.

Click here to more photos from the 2010 Master Sand Sculpting Competition at Hampton Beach. If you want to visit the Coca-Cola Buddha and his sandy friends in person, the sculptures will be on display through June 30th. Enjoy!

 

Just (pet) sitting

It’s more than a bit ironic that this weekend’s Photo Friday theme was “Cleanliness,” as I spent the weekend tending (and cleaning up after) three dogs and eight cats while J is overseas on business this week.

Tending (and cleaning up after) such a menagerie means you spend approximately an hour and a half doing pet tasks every morning: the dogs have to go out, various food and water dishes have to be refilled, five litter-boxes have to be cleaned, and three cats and a dog need their respective medications. In the evening, there’s another hour or so of tasks: again the dogs go out, food dishes get refilled, and various medications are administered. Folks with one or two pets might be able to let some of these daily tasks slide, but if you have a houseful of pets and don’t want to appear on the next episode of Hoarders, you really have to keep on top of your chores.

After spending this weekend doing the chores J typically does every day, I’ve realized how much like living in a Zen Center his routine is. If you live in a Zen Center, you spend about an hour and a half practicing first thing in the morning: first there are prostrations, then there is sitting meditation, then there is chanting. In the evening, there’s another hour or so of practice: again you chant, and again you sit. During the two and a half years I lived at the Cambridge Zen Center, this practice regimen quickly became routine: instead of fighting the schedule or complaining about how much time I “had to” spend meditating, I learned simply to show up for practice.

This weekend felt like a return to old times…except instead of getting out of bed at 5:00 am to do prostrations followed by meditation, I got up at 7:30 to let the first of three dogs out, followed by litter-box cleaning. When you have a dozen pets relying upon you for food, water, and medicine, you can’t take the day off because you don’t really feel like cleaning litter-boxes today. Like meditation, the tasks of litter-box cleaning and pet-bowl refilling are mindlessly repetitive: while doing them, you have ample opportunity to leave your mind alone, and this provides a welcome break from the intellectual rigors of work and other concerns.

When you spend a weekend at home with three dogs and eight cats, there comes a time each afternoon when your chores are temporarily done and all the animals are resting. At quiet moments like this, the satisfaction you feel walking around a house of sleeping, contented pets feels a bit like the the surge of contentment you feel on a Zen retreat when, after dinner and a hot shower, you walk uphill to evening practice believing with all your heart that nothing in the world could be more blissful than the plain gravel path underfoot. When I first met J, I felt no need to teach him meditation, for even though he doesn’t practice Zen, I could tell J has his own practice regimen, the ritual of daily pet-tasks serving to ground him in a way that my Zen practice grounds me. Some folks refer to Zen practice as “just sitting,” and after having spent a weekend retreating with a houseful of animals, I feel confident that “just pet-sitting” works toward the same end.

 

I stand as nigh

Yesterday morning I gave consulting interviews at the Cambridge Zen Center, as I do about once a month. Consulting interviews give Zen practitioners a chance to have a private, one-on-one conversation with a teacher: a time to ask questions, talk about things you’d be too embarrassed to mention at a public talk, or simply check in. As a Senior Dharma Teacher, I’m supposed to be the one “answering” student questions, the assumption being that someone who has been practicing long enough to earn the title “Senior Dharma Teacher” must know her way around the karmic block. But of course, I’m as new to the metaphysical neighborhood as the next person, so I never know exactly what will come out of my mouth when someone enters the interview room looking for Answers From The Teacher.

I’m always amazed by how sitting face-to-face behind closed doors with someone creates a heightened sense of awareness, an experience just as intense as any silent meditation session. Perhaps it’s the sanctity of the Zen Center’s interview room, a place where I’ve spent many a face-to-face session on the student cushion puzzling over some metaphysical mystery or (more typically) struggling with some personal conundrum. Given this history, it seems outright comical to find myself sitting, about once a month, in the teacher’s seat. I always feel a bit like the Wizard of Oz when I don my long, bat-winged Dharma teacher robes. Walking down the street, I’m just another average Joe, but when I put on my Dharmic Disguise, people think I have answers, insight, or clarity they lack.

“Ignore the woman behind the curtain,” I’m sometimes tempted to say when students enter the Interview Room at the sound of the bell that signals “next”…but I don’t. As much as the Wizard of Oz turns out to be another clueless guy from Kansas, Dorothy and her companions need to believe that someone like the wizard exists. Before Dorothy and her companions are ready to realize they already have the things they seek, they need the feedback of an impartial third party to validate their quest. The Wizard of Oz doesn’t give Dorothy, the Tin-Man, the Cowardly Lion, or the Scarecrow anything they didn’t already have…but somehow they each needed to make the trip to Oz to realize what was already as apparent as the ruby slippers on Dorothy’s feet.

Like the Wizard of Oz, I don’t have much in the way of Answers to offer those folks who are brave enough to sit face-to-face with me behind the closed door of the Zen Center interview room. Instead, I try to listen and be present with whatever question, problem, or situation each individual brings, and when I do open my mouth, I hear myself saying variations on the same basic responses. “Yes, I’ve experienced the same thing,” “You’re on the right track, so keep going,” and “You already understand” all sound like pat answers, the Dharmic equivalent of a doctor saying “Take two aspirins and call me in the morning.” But all of these responses are nonetheless entirely true. In most cases, even beginning practitioners already understand, in their heart of hearts, what they need to do in Situation X, or they already are halfway down the road to their own solution, and they simply need encouragement to keep going. And yes, there is very little any given Zen practitioner can tell me in interview that I haven’t done, thought, or otherwise experienced myself, too: there are only so many flavors of suffering we all keep rehashing and reheating in recipe after recipe, ad nauseum.

Before arriving at the Zen Center on Sunday, I took my usual walk around Cambridge to clear my head before practice began. In a park at the end of Auburn Street, between Central Square and MIT, I stumbled upon a plaza with the words of Walt Whitman inscribed on the sidewalk: “If you are a workman or workwoman, I stand as nigh as the nighest that works in the same shop.” In the 1855 version of Whitman’s “Carol of Occupations,” Whitman reassured readers that divinity isn’t some distant person or concept; it’s as close at hand as your nearest neighbor. Similarly, the answers any of us seek aren’t far off or even separate from ourselves: you needn’t visit a Zen Center, go into a special room at the sound of a bell, or ask a teacher.

The answers any of us seek are like Dorothy’s ruby slippers, already on our feet, or like the wisdom, courage, and heart the scarecrow, lion, and tin-man already had. The answers any of us seek are as close and familiar as our own nose: something immediately close at hand, but sometimes hard to see. The dialogue between so-called-teacher and so-called-student on Sunday mornings in the Zen Center interview room is like looking into a mirror. In case you need help finding and seeing your own nose, a teacher sits as nigh as a face-to-face neighbor ready to reflect back that which you already own and understand.

 

Unexpected

Last night on my way to practice at the Cambridge Zen Center, I took the T to Harvard Square, ostensibly to go notebook- and pen-shopping at Bob Slate. In reality, though, I simply wanted to lose myself in an anonymous throng of fellow pedestrians, as is possible in a city like Cambridge. (As true as this Ben & Jerry’s ad is when it comes to the pace of passing pedestrians, it gets its geography wrong. The throngs passing through the Harvard Square T station are largely composed of Cantabrigians, not Bostonians. So much for market research.)

Before I left for Cambridge yesterday, I had duly planned to blog, as I do most days: one of the repeating items on each day’s to-do list, in fact, is “blog.” But as I did this time last summer, this past week I’ve felt a bit of the blog-blahs. In the past, I’ve gone walking around Harvard Square when I’ve felt my Muse was hibernating; sometimes a simple change of scenery helps you see things in a new, more creative way. Or sometimes not. One of the things about both writing and meditation practice, I’ve learned, is you can’t generalize based on past experiences. Something that worked last week, last month, or last year might not work the same way if you try it again. The standard investment advice of “your results may vary” applies not only when you compare yourself with others but also when you compare your current situation with whatever happened previously. That was then, and this is now.

And yet, we continue to make this sort of comparison because comparing seems to be a deeply entrenched aspect of human nature. One of the recurring themes I encounter in the questions I field as a Senior Dharma Teacher giving consulting interviews at the Zen Center, in fact, involves this sort of comparison: “I read somewhere that you’re supposed to do/feel/experience X when you meditate, but when I meditate, I do/feel/experience Y. Is this/am I normal?” The standard answer to the “is this/am I normal” question is YES. The books say “X,” but your results may vary. It’s not that the books are wrong, and it’s not that your experience is wrong: it’s that the Present Moment hardly ever looks how you, the books, or anyone else expected.

Finding yourself, again, in a situation that Isn’t What You Expected, now what? The openness of this “now what?” is the space where the Present Moment unfurls, flowers, and bears fruit. But what unfurls, flowers, and fruits today probably won’t be identical to what you’ve grown used to. What two leaves, flowers, or fruits are identical? The beauty of any walk through Cambridge or any other city–the beauty of any stroll among fast-paced Cantabrigians, Bostonians, or others–is that you never know quite what to expect. If you knew exactly what pen or notebook to buy, what need would there be for shopping? If you knew exactly what you want to blog today, tomorrow, or the next day, what room would there be for exploration, serendipity, and surprise?

 

The wisdom of mist

It’s still raining from yesterday and last night, although “rain” is perhaps too strong a word for this mist that falls without the sound of raindrops. You can see it in the air, and you can see it in the drops and rivulets that gather on impervious surfaces. But you can walk through it, like a cloud, without feeling you’re getting wet.

It’s a metaphor often used in Zen that meditation practice is like walking through mountain mist: without realizing it, you get soaked clear through. And I guess that’s how things have been with my own Zen practice: as I do it, it doesn’t feel like it’s working, but all these years later, look at how wet I’ve become.

I think many things are like that: if you do something daily, you get better at it without really knowing it. As Ken Kessel JPSN once said, we become what we practice, or as Malcolm Gladwell writes, it takes 10,000 hours of doing something diligently to become proficient at it.

I know that over the years, I’ve probably spent 10,000 hours on my meditation mat, and as many hours (at least!) scribbling lines in cherished black notebooks. And I’ve probably spent the equivalent of 10,000 hours blogging, or snapping photos if you could somehow tally the total time it takes to snap, snap, snap day after day, taking bad shots along with the good and gradually learning how to sort one from the other.

It’s not a mystery, this method of doing something every day whether it seems to be working or not. It’s simply the wisdom of mountain mist: an imperceptible influence that cannot be denied.

This is a lightly edited version of this morning’s journal entry, illustrated with images from yesterday’s misty-morning walk down Modica Way in Central Square, Cambridge.