LOVING THE WORLD AS IT IS

In Dogen Zengi's fascicle Bendowa, he describes zazen as unfabricated clear seeing, unconstructedness in stillness. The first paragraph reads:" All Buddha Tathagatas together have been simply transmitting wondrous dharma, and actualizing anuttara samyak sambodhi (incomparable awareness) for which there is an unsurpassable, unfabricated wondrous method".

Dogen further describes zazen as self-fulfillment or self-enjoyment, "the self receiving and accepting its function". The self receives its own freedom, its own contraction and relaxation, absorption and release in the fulfillment of this meditation.

"Buddhas continuously dwell in and maintain this dharma, yet no trace of conceptualization remains. Living beings constantly function in and use this dharma, yet it does not appear in their perception."

Practice is about penetrating the membrane of mentality that's between us and our life. It's meeting something beyond what the mind knows: meeting it with our body, our senses, our skin, our ears. We accomplish this when we trust ourselves enough to drop off what the mind knows.

It is stillness which receives the benefit of this activity. "Because it is unconstructedness in stillness" it does not appear within perception. The deep and subtle work of practice is mysterious, unrecognizable to consciousness.

Recently, I have come to realize that our work is to love the world just as it is. Because our discriminating mind is constantly thinking of improvements for the world, (how I should be, how you should be), to love it as it is means to completely accept those thoughts and also our regrets about how the world is. We can practice being willing to be in the world completely, wishing there weren’t a war but doing our best to respond appropriately to world circumstances and to find someway to live through the convolutions of this life.

Loving the world as it is, is being willing to be in the only world we know. This is really the point of practice.

When we say that everything is suffering, we are voicing the first noble truth which acknowledges that the reality of our life is fragile, constantly subject to changing conditions. Many of us are experiencing financial, psychological, emotional, social insecurity. When we find it's not in our power to make our lives safe and secure for ourselves and our families, we begin to become aligned with life as it is. Humility and maturity may arise.

Buddhism is not some special teaching, and enlightenment is not some particular stage that we attain. Our wisdom mind studies the actual life we live, our habits of mind, our desires, our disappointments, our fears, our embarrassments. Studying those phenomenal events opens the gateway to realization. We study our regrets, desires, everything that’s unfulfilled. Until we understand the dynamics of our mental life fully, we will be caught by the idea that there is some better state of mind than ours. Suzuki-Roshi called this "idealistic practice".

He had a wife and children. At one point he had a monk living at his temple in Japan and his wife was quite worried about this monk and complained to her husband. Suzuki Roshi didn’t heed her fears and allowed the monk to stay. His Bodhisattva vow was very strong. One day when Suzuki-Roshi was away from the temple this monk acted on his delusions and killed the wife. Upon his return, Suzuki Roshi had to accept his own actions, his own thoughts, his inability to listen to his wife and his inability to protect his family.

The Suzuki-Roshi we met, the mature, wise person we knew, was the person who came through experiences like that. Likewise, the Thich Nhat Hanh we meet today, has come through enormous suffering, enormous pain which has matured and developed his understanding and his teaching. We have to go through things we’ve never dreamed we would have to experience in this life, in order to mature
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Sitting in this self-fulfilling and self-receiving samadhi, sitting quietly in unconstructed stillness, is the gift we give to the world, the gift we receive ourselves. It may not feel like unconstructed stillness, it may feel like you are complaining the entire period, or being tired, being sleepy. Even that activity can be beneficial, if we are willing to experience and release it without mental commentary.

When I walk on the labyrinth in front of the local Episcopal church, there’s something profoundly relaxing and joyful about not going anyplace, just taking a step and being in that step and taking another step and just being in that step. The willingness to be in the buddha field of our life doesn’t mean only in zazen. We can do it at work, in our relationships with our family members, our friends. Regardless of our regrets and disappointments and wishes for things to be different, we acknowledge what is actually happening. Settling into just this is a blessing. This is what the world asks of us.

Student: , I think I am beginning to understand this willingness to continue to sit zazen even not knowing why, just doing it. What does buddhism mean by faith?
KT: The Sanskrit word for faith includes confidence. Not confidence in Buddha but the confidence of Buddha. We have to have some confidence in ourselves that just sitting or non-doing has some value for us. So hopefully in our meditation we begin to have the experience that the mind of non-doing, of just watching, strengthens the observing mind in other situations as well. We are usually trying to fulfill a life that we conjure up, while not touching our actual sentient life, not tasting it, not feeling it. The shift of practice is out of a mental life and into our actual life. That is its own reward. We find our feet on the ground.

When we step back from the judging, controlling mind and realize that what the mind thinks is just what the mind thinks, there is deep relaxation. We let go of blaming ourselves for our thoughts; we acknowledge that "there is thinking, but I don't think".

Even though "just as you are is perfect", we also know that our tendencies are often aggressive and self-justifying. Practicing the precepts allows us to see how difficult it is to tame this restless mind. We learn that we don't need to put anyone down in order to feel good about ourselves. We don’t have to be more powerful or more important or achieve more than other people. We become more humble.

How do you get to the place where you can trust this life, this not knowing, this mystery?

Suzuki-Roshi said it takes about ten years to find your seat in zazen. Well some people have some big experience the first time they sit and then they spend twenty years trying to recapture or understand that. We can have a deep quiet mind any time we step back from thoughts into just listening to them. We can learn to do that; we can come out of the busy mind, to the one that's not busy. That’s the buddha field.

—edited from a talk by Katherine Thanas

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