Words can only point the way. Memorizing words and being able to repeat them is like being
broke and counting other people’s money. Even if you understand the things I’m saying
intellectually, it means nothing compared to having the insight rise spontaneously within you.
My Zen is simple. – Be still. Look Out. Put it all down. Don’t get stuck. Don’t give up.
Zazen is the best way of learning how to be still. But if you look closely enough at zazen, you’ll
realize that you are always in motion. You have lungs that are moving, you have a heart that is
beating, you have blood moving through your veins, you have your sustenance moving through
your intestines. No matter how still you sit, you are in perpetual motion – true stillness is fluid,
dynamic, seamless. Zazen is our opportunity to experience the fluid stillness that I’m speaking
of for ourselves. This fluid stillness is what we must take from our cushions and into the world.
How difficult it is for people to sit still these days. Just the physical act itself is daunting. How
bizarre, considering that all you are doing is just sitting still. How much more difficult it is to get
out of your own way and just breathe and be without judgments and without expectations.
One of the easiest ways to be still is to Look Out! Look out with the eyes, the ears, the nose, the
tongue, the body, the mind — without thinking. With the same nonjudgmental mind of zazen, to
look out means to experience the clarity of sound – whether traffic on the highway, the white-
noise of the marketplace, birds singing, cicadas in the summer, a baby’s cries for help – the
pure activity of hearing, seeing, smelling, tasting, feeling without naming, without defining, just that pause of deep absorption. That is the moment of transcendence, of disappearing, of letting
the ego, the personal self, go. Look out! also means, you better Look out! or you might miss the
whole activity of appearing and disappearing. You do it naturally anyway, why not Step back
and see? And once again, as simple as it might sound, it’s very difficult for people to look out
without opinions, without asserting the “I am” self. It’s difficult to step back and see the
thoughts that rise and fall as nothing more than mind-clouds that come and go – observe, don’t
judge, don’t get stuck. To look out also means to manifest empathy and compassion towards
others, free of judgment. If everything in your life revolves around you, you cannot Look out. To
look out means to get over yourself.
Having seen, put it all down. If you’ve truly been still, if you’ve truly seen, then you have
already had the experience of putting it all down. We are all so much more than what we think
we are. This process of “putting it all down” is not a one-time thing. It’s a moment-to-moment
thing. To put it all down means to be totally present, to be totally present means to be without
judgment, without self or other. Like inhaling and exhaling, we pick up, we put down. One
activity. In fact, to put it all down amounts to one thing: drop the ego and pick it up again. To
use the ego without being used by the ego, means gaining the wisdom and insight to know
what to discard and what to keep. To do that requires stillness and contemplation – (different
from meditation) – and examining truthfully, and sometimes painfully, our many flaws and
short-comings. Inevitably, one must forgive oneself for “missing the mark” repeatedly. When
we face our own flaws honestly, we are less likely to point the finger of blame at others. This is where empathy comes from. Compassion is when trying to help those in need because we’ve
been there and done that, (or some variation of it).
Don’t get stuck. Ever. To be stuck is against your True Nature. Again, it’s very difficult to not get
stuck. It takes practice. To be stuck usually means to be trapped by any one of the many
fictional narratives that we’ve constructed for the sake of trying to understand ourselves and
the world we live in. We need these narratives; but, just as our lives are always works “in
progress” so are our narratives; they are constantly being edited and revised, unless we get
stuck. We all live with tragedies in our lives. When it’s time to cry you should cry; when it’s time
to suffer you should suffer, and when it’s time to let go and put it all down, you should,
otherwise, you’re stuck. Sadly, some people get stuck for any number of reasons, and suffer for
a lifetime.
Don’t give up. Here I’m specifically referring to zazen. I was very fortunate to have awakened to
the power of zazen when I was a beginning student in training at Mt. Baldy. I realized back then,
that zazen was a gift that kept on giving. There was no end to zazen. Over four decades later I
can say most definitely that my insight was true: there is no end to zazen. It might be more
accurate to say that I don’t sit zazen, zazen sits in me. Zazen is what breathes. Zazen itself is the
life of all the senses without my interference. True Nature: you can’t grasp it, you can’t know it,
you can only manifest it. What is it? Everywhere. Look out!
Early on I also learned that no one can do it for you. I trained with a great Zen Master; despite
his relentless efforts, his constant manifestation of grandmotherly kindness to all his students,
he couldn’t, (no one can), just give enlightenment to anyone who asks. Through koan practice
and private instruction (in sanzen), he could push us closer to the edge of the cliff, but we were
the ones who had to make the leap. It always seemed to me that the Buddha’s ultimate
teaching was, “Sit like this and see for yourself.”
And there you have it: that’s why I always say, More zazen! How can you go wrong? Sometimes
people ask me, “How do I know if I’m making any progress?” Look at your life. Zazen is not so
much about getting, but rather, getting rid of. About 20 years into my practice, I realized that,
while I didn’t know what enlightenment was, I knew what lighten-ment was: lightening the
load. This I understood without a doubt, especially as one who started practice with a whole lot
of baggage. If you still feel burdened by your endless ruminations and fantasies, by your limited
and limiting narratives, then, simply put, you need more zazen.
No matter what I say, no matter how many times I say it, it’s all just words. Hopefully, my words
can point the Way. But no one can do the work of zazen but you. That right there is Zen’s built
in crap-detector – no zazen, no Zen. That may sound rather extreme, but what I’m really saying
is, no Zen Mind, no Zen, and the most expedient means of awakening to Zen Mind is zazen.
Tried and true.
With a deep bow, more zazen!
Seido Ray Ronci –
Hokoku-an, 2/16/25
