Nothing Special: Living Zen Read online

  In addition to labeling our thoughts, we need to stay with our body sensations. If we work at both with the utmost patience, we slowly open up to a new vision of life.

  We want a life that is as rich and wide—as beneficial—as it possibly can be. We all have the possibility for such a life. Intelligence helps; the people who come to Zen centers are typically quite bright. But bright people also tend to get caught up in too much thinking and analyzing. No matter what the discipline—art, music, physics, philosophy—we can pervert it and use it to avoid practice. But if we don’t do it, life gives us kick after kick after kick, until we learn what we need to learn. No one can do this practice for us; we have to do it by ourselves. The only test of whether we are doing it is our lives.

  The Tomato Fighters

  A moment ago I had a call from a friend on the East Coast who is dying. She said that she had perhaps three or four days left and that she was calling to say good-bye. After the call, I was reminded of the preciousness of this jewel we call life—and of how little we know or appreciate it. Even if we know it a bit, how little we take care of it!

  Some, especially those in spiritual communities, may imagine that the jewel of life never has conflict, argument, or upset—just calmness, peacefulness. That’s a great mistake, because if we don’t understand how conflict is generated, we can wreck our lives and the lives of others. First, we need to see that we are all afraid. Our basic fear is of death, and this fear is the basis of all other fears. Our fear of our own annihilation leads to useless behaviors, including the effort to protect our self-image, or ego. Out of that need to protect comes anger. Out of anger comes conflict. And conflict destroys our relationships with others.

  I don’t mean to imply that a good life has no heated arguments, no disagreements; that’s silly. When I was growing up I knew a couple of old men and their families very well. The families were friendly and often went off together for weekends. These two men competed on every front, but most especially during the tomato season. They would both enter their best tomatoes in the local fair. Their arguments about their tomatoes were classic: they raised their voices until the walls shook. And in fact, they both won “Best in Fair.” It was delightful to watch them because they both knew the arguing was just fun. The test of a good conflict, a good exchange of opinions, is that when the conflict is over there is no residue of coolness or bitterness, no clinging to an idea that “I won, and you didn’t.” Arguments are fine, but only if they are fun. If we have a fight with someone close to us and afterward we supposedly forgive and forget, but in fact remain cool and distant, it’s time to look more closely.

  A verse from the Tao Te Ching states, “The best athlete / wants his opponent at his best. / The best general / enters the mind of his enemy. / The best businessman / serves the communal good. / The best leader / follows the will of the people. / / All of them embody / the virtue of non-competition. / Not that they don’t love to compete, / but they do it in the spirit of play. / In this they are like children / and in harmony with the Tao.” If our arguments are in that spirit, that’s fine. But how often is this the case?

  Suzuki Roshi was once asked if anger could be like a pure wind that wipes everything clean. He said, “Yes, but I don’t think you need to worry about that.” He said that he himself had never had an anger that was like the pure wind. And our anger is surely not that pure, either, because of the fear that lies beneath the anger. Unless we contact and experience our fear, we will have harmful anger.

  A good example is in our efforts to be honest. Honesty is the absolute basis of our practice. But what does that mean? Suppose we say to another, “I want to be honest with you. I want to share with you how I see our relationship.” What we say could be helpful. But often our efforts to be honest don’t come from real honesty, from a spirit of play, from including the other—even though we may pretend that. As long as we have any intention to be right, to show or teach the other person something, we should be wary. So long as our words have the slightest ego attachment, they are dishonest. True words come when we understand what it is to know we’re angry, to know we’re fearful, and to wait. The ancient words say, “Do you have the patience to wait until your mind settles and the water is clear? Can you remain unmoving until the right action arises by itself?” That’s a wonderful way of putting the point: can we be quiet for a moment, until the right words arise by themselves—honest words, words that don’t hurt others

  Such words may be very frank. They may exactly communicate what we need to say. They may even be the same words we might have spoken out of our ego, but there will be a difference. To live in this way is not easy; none of us can do it all of the time. Our first reaction comes out of self-preservation and fear, and then anger jumps right in. Our feelings are hurt, we are frightened, and so we get angry.

  If we have the patience to wait until the mud (our mind) settles and the water is clear, if we remain unmoving till the right action arises by itself, the right words will arise, without our thinking about them. We won’t need to justify what we are saying with multiple reasons; we won’t have to give reasons at all. The right words will say themselves if we have settled down. We can’t do this without sincere practice. It may not be a formal practice; sometimes we just take a deep breath, wait for a second, feel our guts, and then speak. On the other hand, if we’re having a major conflict with somebody, we may need more time. It might be better to say nothing for a month.

  My old friends who argued about the tomatoes had no intent to harm. Despite the noise, there was practically no ego involvement. They had been playing this game for years. Often from students I hear tales about dealings with friends, what has gone wrong, and what they want to do to “right” it. “My friend did something mean. My friend was lacking. I’ll let him know how I feel.” About such situations, Jesus said, “Let him who is without sin throw the first stone.” We are all lacking. I’m lacking; you’re lacking; we’re all lacking. But our ego tells us only that the other fellow is lacking. Much of what we call communicating with others during our conflicts boils down to telling them how they are lacking. Then they naturally want to tell us how we are lacking. And so it goes, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. Nothing useful or true is communicated. The persons speaking are like two ships that pass in the night. People object to waiting until the mud clears, however; we’re afraid we will be taken advantage of. But can we truly be taken advantage of?

  STUDENT: We can’t be taken advantage of, but we sure feel like it much of the time.

  JOKO : Yes, we often feel that we are being taken advantage of. Suppose a person owes us money and doesn’t pay it. Or someone breaks a promise to us. Or someone talks about us behind our back. And so on; we all do such things. Are such actions grounds for abandoning a friendship, a partner, a child, or a parent? Do we have the patience to wait till our mud settles and the water is clear? Can we remain unmoving till the right action arises by itself? Sometimes we are angry with ourselves. When this happens, we usually are using words that are false, springing out of our propensity to feel injured or hurt. Instead of directing the angry words at someone else, we have turned them on ourselves. But only out of the Tao—the emptiness, the quiet—can arise right words and right action. Right words and right action are the Tao.

  As I teach, I’m less interested in the conflicts students have than in the character of their words and where the words come from. With people who have been practicing a while, the words may sound better but still come from the wrong place. “I know it’s all me. I know it’s got nothing to do with you. I don’t want to be picky or fussy, but…” The judgment is still there, just disguised. They might as well say, “Damn it! Why don’t you pick up your clothes?” Though it’s nice for clothes to be picked up, that’s not the way to make it happen. Can we remain unmoving, can we keep our mouths shut until the right action or the right word arises by itself? Most of the time, there’s no harm in doing nothing. Most of what we do doesn’t make m
uch difference, anyway; we just think it does.

  We are all angry people because we are all frightened. Luckily, we often have the opportunity of practicing with anger with people who are difficult for us. We may try to deal with such persons by cutting them out of our lives. Why do we do this?

  STUDENT: Because we think they’re the cause of our problem.

  STUDENT: To make our life easier.

  STUDENT: Because they don’t do what we want them to.

  STUDENT: Because they might show us something about ourselves that we don’t want to see.

  STUDENT: To avoid our own guilt.

  STUDENT: We might want to punish them.

  STUDENT: Perhaps the last time we were together was too confusing and painful, and we don’t want to get near that spot.

  JOKO : We need to be willing to rest in the confusion and unpleasantness, to let the mud settle until we can see more clearly. With such practice we can uncover the precious jewel of our life; then there will be an absence of squabbling. We may still have arguments, but like the tomato fighters—playfully. When we study anger fully, it disappears. As Dogen Zenji said, to study Buddhism is to study the self, and to study the self is to forget the self. When our anger resolves into emptiness, there’s no problem; the right action arises by itself. In intensive retreats, this process is accelerated. The selfcentered self becomes more transparent, clearer, so that we can settle right through it. As the mud settles and the water becomes clearer, we can see the jewel—almost as if we were in tropical waters and could look into the depths and see the colored fish and plants. Then we can speak true words, as opposed to self-centered words, which always create disharmony.

  STUDENT: Joko, what do you say to somebody who is dying?

  JOKO: Not much, or “I love you.” Even when we are dying, we still want to be part of the human experience.

  STUDENT : Sometimes when I have a conflict, if I just come out and say something in the best way that I can, even if it is not perfect, I learn a lot about myself that I don’t want to know, and it’s very valuable. And then I can be honest about that instead of waiting.

  JOKO : Yes, I understand. When I say to wait, I’m not talking about a formula. I’m talking about an attitude of learning. Sometimes it is useful to say something before the mud settles; it depends on the attitude, the spirit of the words. Even if the spirit is somewhat off, if we’re learning fast as we do it, that can be okay, too. If we do it badly, then we apologize. We should always be ready to apologize; we all have something to apologize about.

  STUDENT: Often I really think I am being honest, and only in retrospect do I see that I was in the midst of self-deception.

  JOKO : Yes. The test of a good conflict as opposed to one that is harmful is that there is no residue afterward. Everyone feels good afterward. It’s clear. It’s over. The air is pleasant. It’s great, though rare.

  STUDENT: It seems that there are some things that we just can’t fix, however.

  JOKO: I’m not talking about fixing things; that’s trying to control the world, to run the universe.

  STUDENT: Sometimes I allow people to abuse me. When I do that, it is important to speak up. If I speak up, sometimes I get good results.

  JOKO : It’s fine to speak up, if we can speak up with true words. And if we feel that we have been abused, we need to recognize that we may have allowed the abuse. When we see this, it may be unnecessary to say anything. Instead of trying to educate or save the other person (which is never our business), we can simply learn.

  Do Not Judge

  There’s a passage in the Dhammapada, verse 50: “Let none find fault in others. Let none see omissions and commissions in others. But let one see one’s own acts, done and undone.” This is a key aspect of our practice. Though practice may make us more aware of our tendency to judge others, in ordinary life we still do it. Because we are human, we judge one another. Someone does something that seems to us rude or unkind or thoughtless, and we can’t help noticing it. Many times a day, we see people doing things that seem lacking in some way.

  It’s not that everyone always acts appropriately. People often do just what we are objecting to. When they do what they do, however, it’s not necessary for us to judge them. I’m not immune from this; I find myself judging others, also. We all do. So I recommend a practice to help us catch ourselves in the act of judging: whenever we say the name of another person, we should watch what we add to the name. What do we say or think about the person? What kind of label do we use? Do we put the person into some category? No person should be reduced to a label; yet because of our preferences and dislikes, we do it anyway.

  I suspect that if you do this practice, you’ll find that you can’t go for five minutes without judgment. It’s amazing. We want other people’s behavior to be just what we want—and when it’s not, we judge them. Our waking life is full of such judgments.

  Few of us hurt other people physically. The main way we hurt others is with our mouths. As someone said, “There are two times to keep your mouth shut: when you’re swimming—and when you’re angry.” When we judge others to be wrong, we get to be right—which we like.

  As the passage says, we should be concerned for our own behavior, instead. “But let one see one’s own acts, done and undone.” Instead of looking around constantly and judging everybody else, let us see our own behavior: what we have done and what we have not done. We don’t need to judge ourselves, but simply notice how we act. If we start judging ourselves, we have set up an ideal, a certain way we think we must be. This also is not helpful. We need to see our actual thoughts, to be aware of what is actually true for us. If we do this, we will notice that whenever we judge, our body tightens up. Behind the judgment is a self-centered thought that produces tension in our body. Over time, that tension is harmful to us, and indirectly harmful to others. Not only is the tension harmful; the judgments we express about others (and ourselves) are harmful, too.

  Whenever we say a person’s name, it’s useful to notice whether we have stated more than a fact. For example, the judgment “she’s thoughtless” goes beyond the facts. The facts are, she did what she did—for example, she said she’d call me, and she didn’t. That she was thoughtless is my own negative judgment, added onto that fact. We will find ourselves making such judgments over and over. Practice means to become aware when we do this. It’s important not to slither unaware over great areas of our life, and much of our life involves talking.

  STUDENT: Is it okay to say, “She said she’d call, and she didn’t”?

  JOKO : It depends upon how it’s said. If we “state the facts” in an accusing way, we’re clearly making a judgment, even if the words seem factual.

  STUDENT : When we notice other people’s mistakes, it helps us to know what not to do. In a way we should be grateful for their errors. JOKO: Yes, it’s useful to see others as our teachers. But if our learning involves seeing others as “wrong,” we’re still caught in judgment.

  If we stay awake and are not wrapped up in our emotions, we tend to learn. Nearly always, however, what we do is to get upset in some way. Out of our upset, we judge others and judge ourselves. Either is harmful—and unfruitful.

  STUDENT : I tend to keep my mouth shut about others. But I notice that when I get angry or upset, my judgments come out indirectly, in my attitude and in passive-aggressive behavior. I find that really hard to work with.

  JOKO : The key phrase here is, “Let one see one’s own acts, done and undone.” That means simply to notice our attitude, our thoughts, and our behavior. And, to return to our basic bodily experience of the anger, to really feel it.

  STUDENT : At work we sometimes get into complaining and gossiping about the boss. If I refuse to participate, it’s as if I’m being aloof or arrogant and believe I’m better than they are.

  JOKO : That is a difficult situation to work with. One of the marks of skillful practice is to be present without participating in harmful actions. For you that would mean to be
in a group that is judging and being critical, yet to remain noncritical and not be seen as acting superior or different. It can be done. How might we manage to do it? What would be useful?

  STUDENT: Humor.

  JOKO: Yes, humor helps. What else?

  STUDENT: Not judging the other people who are being critical.

  JOKO : Yes. If everyone else is gossiping and we’ve decided that we’re not going to do that, we’re probably feeling superior, “holier than thou.” We may be feeling anger at them, too. If our attitude is angry and superior, that judgment will come through. If we have honestly practiced with our anger, however, it may be minimal and not a problem. We can just be present in the group naturally.

  STUDENT : I’ve noticed that when I’m in a group that is gossiping or being critical about others, if I just let them talk without myself joining in any judgment, they often come around eventually to see the other side. If I try to nip it in the bud at the beginning, however, the judging escalates. If I argue or try to point out the good qualities of the person they are criticizing, it all gets confused.