Trying to understand the Mind with the mind is a big mistake.
—Sengstan
Be Still —
It has been taught for centuries that the most expedient means of entering the Way of meditation is to start by sitting still. This simply requires a stable posture whether sitting in a chair, kneeling, or sitting in the traditional cross-legged yoga position. No matter what, it is important to keep the back straight, the hips slightly forward, the head straight but the eyes lowered. Once you have arrived at a stable posture, focus on your breathing.
Look Out —
Many people imagine that to meditate means to gaze inwardly and go deeply inside oneself, looking for the truth of birth and death, looking for answers to all life’s questions and hoping to find them buried deep down inside the depths of consciousness, like archeologists of the soul, they journey through the endless labyrinth of narratives over and over only to find more and more narratives. This is “trying to understand the Mind with the mind.” Instead, look out.
To “look out” while sitting means to look out with the eyes, look out with the ears, look out with the nose, look out with the tongue, look out with the whole body and look out with the mind. This means turning all your senses outward: when seeing, only see; when hearing, only hear, when smelling, only smell, when thinking, step back and see: just that, nothing extra.
Put It All Down —
Looking out, without judgments or distinctions, is putting it all down. This is essential to meditation: you must drop all opinions, all sense of love and hate, right and wrong, good or bad, gain and loss — put it all down. As you focus on posture and breathing and turn all your senses outward, the debris of habitual thoughts settles down and disappears. This is crucial in order to understand the very nature of the thinking self and how thoughts spontaneously arise and disappear and arise again incessantly. But first you must be still, look out and put it all down.
Don’t Get Stuck —
Thinking/non-thinking is one activity like a swinging door moving one-way and then another again and again. There are two worlds. The world as is, and the world you live in. The world as is, is the world of non-discrimination free of judgment. The world you live in is the world you’ve made with thinking. Understand that your True Nature is to move back and forth between both worlds. This is why you must not get stuck in one or the other. In order to not get stuck, continue to practice looking out and putting it all down.
The Way of Meditation In Action —
Human beings are meaning-making creatures. As soon as a child gains some ability with language they begin to construct the narratives that help them make sense of their world and their life. These narratives are provisional: they serve well for a while but then they are dropped and replaced by newer narratives. This process repeats throughout a lifetime because the body comes with a built in narrative structure: it has a beginning and an end. And it has a middle that is constantly changing. As our bodies change, our way of being in the world changes and so our narratives change as well.
What we call “myself” is forever a work in progress. Sometimes, the self that is only the self gets stuck. While the built-in physical narrative of the body moves continually to its own demise, the narratives of the self-serving self can get stuck or fixated, too narrow, too limited. As a result, we live with and are bogged down by a lot of accumulated clutter stuffed into this self that is only the self. We cherish our stories and narratives, we cherish our insights and knowledge: we’ve invested a lot of time, effort and money creating this self that is only the self. It’s difficult to realize that we are way more than simply this limited self.
We think that without our narratives we’ll cease to exist or all meaning will disappear from our lives. And yet, if you’ve lived 20 or 30 or 40 years and more you’ve already “put it all down” time and time again. You’ve had to. That’s growth. And after enough time, that’s wisdom. Our whole life is the process of putting down and picking up. This activity is the Way, it cannot be grasped or comprehended it can only be manifested.
All day everyday we are putting down and picking up, appearing and disappearing. For example — in the morning you have a cup of coffee or tea. The thinking self, (the subject), reaches out and raises a cup (the object) to the lips. Subject and object merge, become one — no distance, only sipping. In that briefest of moments there is no self, there is no tea, there is only sipping. But then, distance appears — subject and object separate and once again the self that is only the self is born, “Ahhhh, what a great cup of tea!” Self, the meaning-maker is back. Or, you’re walking down a busy street and suddenly you catch the scent of lilacs, again, at that brief moment, there is only the smell of lilacs — no traffic, no noise, no people. Subject and object merge at the first scent of the flowers and then in no time the thinking self is reborn. This is looking out with your nose. This kind of activity takes place all day every day but we rarely, if ever, recognize it for what it is: this activity of expansion and contraction itself is the manifestation of our True Nature which transcends all narratives.
For many people, what they say about the tea or the lilacs becomes more real than either the tea or the lilacs. Descartes said, “I think; therefore, I am.” Who are you before thinking? Who are you when not thinking? When an athlete or musician is “in the zone” where are they? They aren’t thinking, they’re immersed in doing; so according to Descartes, they don’t exist. The Way is not a one-way street. The self that is only the self is always appearing and disappearing. That is its Way. Again, however, what we make of things often takes precedence over the reality of things as they are and so we get stuck in our provisional and temporary thoughts.
Some people think that by putting it all down life becomes meaningless and you are left with nothing but emptiness: empty of what? Meanings come and go and change over time. Nothing is permanent. When you can put it all down and get out of your own way, it’s much easier to truly look out, unencumbered, and see others and hear others and feel with and for others. This is where empathy comes from. Get out of your own way and it’ll be a lot easier to put yourself in someone else’s shoes. Once you can do that, your understanding grows and compassion grows with it and that’s how you can change the world, moment by moment, one person at a time.
Still, some people think that to not get stuck means to be fickle, or aloof or noncommittal. Not getting stuck simply means not being trapped by your own delusions of self. Not getting stuck means to be free to look out!
Often, our perception of self is too limited. We all aspire to understand the self that is only the self, but what about the non-self self? Where does the athlete go during peak performance? Where does the musician go during a solo? Where does the dancer go during the dance? Gone. But the athlete, the musician and the dancer always return to the self that is only the self. This activity of expansion and contraction is what we call the Way. Getting stuck is antithetical to the Way.
To live in the zone, moment by moment, day by day, means doing whatever it is you’re doing 100%: when you’re washing the dishes you are only washing the dishes. When you are driving you are only driving. When you are cooking you are only cooking. When changing diapers you are only changing diapers. Don’t get stuck means don’t get trapped by subjective narratives of good and bad, like and dislike.
Meditation in action is the practice of looking out, putting it all down and not getting stuck. But the times we’re living in make this very difficult. Our ways of knowing have changed dramatically in just the past 60 or so years. We have transitioned from a predominantly print-based culture to a television-based culture and now to the digital culture of the world-wide-web and artificial intelligence.
In a print-based culture the brain has a lot of work to do. We aren’t born knowing how to read and it takes a lot of time and changes in the brain’s neural-pathways for us to begin to arrange letters into words and words into the sequence of a sentence and sentences into a logical, comprehensible paragraph. Learning to read and write requires logic, reason, focus and imagination. Television has no prerequisites. Unlike words on a page that need to be read, studied and deciphered, the images on a television just need to be seen. These images tend to appeal more to our narrow egotistical emotions than to our expansive capacity for logic, reason and imagination.
The screens of the digital age have gone far beyond the television. Our computers, tablets, laptops and smart phones are a ubiquitous part of everyday life. It’s hard to tell whether we use the technology or the technology uses us. I’m guessing that millions of people spend more time looking at screens than at the physical world, or at each other. This reinforces our attachment to the egocentric self that is only the self. This is how we end up living more and more in our own little worlds. We look out less and less, and look in more and more, trapped in the labyrinth of the subjective, meaning-making self that we mistakenly believe is the only show in town.
To look out also means to look out for one another. This is how we take meditation off the cushion and into our everyday lives. The first of the Bodhisattva vows is: Infinite are all beings, I vow to save them. This means putting others first. Some people mistakenly think that meditation is a selfish act. On the contrary, meditation, both on the cushion and in the world, is for others. You can begin by vowing to save all beings from yourself. This simply means not dumping all of your accumulated baggage on others. The more you practice looking out, putting it all down and not getting stuck in your everyday life the less and less narrative baggage you will have to carry around and/or dump on others.
The Dangers of Getting Stuck —
To know something about history in general is to know that values and beliefs change over time. Meanings change. And that’s a good thing. One could almost say that progress itself is about correcting mistakes of the past and moving on with new understanding, new values, new insights and new meanings until those too have run their course. As long as we recognize that this ability to change is part of our True Nature, the less likely we are to get stuck and resist the necessary changes that lead to growth and progress.
The biggest problem we face today is rampant unchecked egotism. Egotism is the epitome of being stuck. When people are so trapped by their own self-inflated, subjective narratives and fictional meanings, they lose the ability to empathize and therefore they lack compassion and understanding. The deluded mind cannot fathom the fact that we are all interconnected. To wage war on others is to wage war on oneself. Dehumanizing others is dehumanizing ourselves: absolutely nothing good comes from it.
Imagine a world where people practiced stillness, looking out, putting it all down and not getting stuck on a moment-to-moment basis. Imagine a world where people looked out for others and put the welfare of others first. Imagine a world where people truly manifested good will towards others. Imagine a world where people truly listened to each other, and cared for each other. Such a world can exist if only within each individual who practices the Way of meditation. Through practice, one can be a bright light in a dark world for the benefit of others.
Hokoku-an Zendo –11/3/23
