Listening to a certain branch of Zen-practitioners, one could get the idea that the hardest thing in life is Zen, and the hardest thing in Zen is doing Zazen: sitting hour after hour with painful and numb crossed legs on a pillow facing the wall while fighting sleep and boredom. Alas, confusing Zen with Zazen, the sitting meditation, is widely supported by tradition. I am sure, as with any physical exercise, you can become pretty good at it if you practice hard enough, young enough with a healthy body. And if you overdo, you ruin your body and waste your time.
What did the Buddha say about the benefit of ascetic exercise? He totally gave up on it, after going to the extreme without experiencing any benefit. Following the legend, in the end he just sat down by a tree (what, by the way, is the historical origin of Zazen) and decided to do nothing more than just sitting around until he understood. It worked out, and after just seven days and nights he came up with his most profound teaching, a concept why life most of the time goes so wrong for us: the chain of dependent origination (Pratītyasamutpāda).
It all starts with not knowing (or not wanting to know), Avijjā (無明), and two and a half handful steps later ends with old age and death, Jarāmaraṇa (老死). For those who are into reciting Sutra, and namely the Hannya Shingyo, the Pratītyasamutpāda is referenced by its start- and final-link with the lines:
無無明 MU MU MYO
亦無無明盡 YAKU MU MU MYO JIN
乃至無老死 NAI SHI MU RO SHI
亦無老死盡 YAKU MU RO SHI JIN
ICHI GO ICHI E by Murase Myodoni (村瀬明道尼, 1924-2013), from our Dojo’s collection.
The intermediate links connecting not knowing and old age and death show us how it all comes together, the misery we are in, how things interact and one leads to the other (and back). One core idea within this fundamental teaching is that contact (Phassa 觸) results in sensation (Vedanā 受) and sensation in craving (Taṇhā 愛). We all know it, we all fell for the one or other advertisement, a must-have thing, or in love.
Contact – Sensation – Craving
It works in both directions, a re-enforcing feedback-loop and btw. a possible Buddhist explanation of addiction.
Craving is connected to the next link: clinging (Upādāna 取). After you got what you were craving for, things are even getting worse: now we have it and don’t ever want letting go. “Happy ever after” is coming to my mind, “Stay as you are” or “I will always love you” (The Cure, and countless others).
Contact – Sensation – Craving and then: Never Let It Go
This is a perfect recipe for unhappiness. It makes us feel miserable with much less effort than spending years on a pillow facing the wall, guaranteed!
Where to cut this chain leading into desaster? The traditional answer is: by avoiding contact.
When I met again after many years my old friend and brother in crime for setting up an Aikido Dojo (in spite of funding and expertise) who later became a Bhikkhu (Monk in the Teravada tradition), he refused to shake hands with my spouse, even avoided coming close to her. No “contact” allowed, because, well, we know where it ends. And my friend was an expert, having had more affairs with women (before becoming a monk) than I ever fell in love with. I long lost contact (he couldn’t stand my loose talk on Buddhist things), in case he is still alive I imagine him sitting somewhere in the East-Asian jungle wearing his orange robes, avoiding contact.
But how to prevent getting in contact with our memories? With our hardwired physical demands?
Possibly by floating in a sensory deprivation tank after being brainwashed or sedated for a total loss of memory. Not a very desirable lifestyle, after all.
If not cut the chain at the “contact”-link, where else?
Cutting “sensation”, the next link following contact, might be achieved by austere exercise destroying all sensory perception. I imagine karate students hammering their fists into wooden boards, or kung fu masters feeling no pain when hit with a stone on their forehead or stabbed by a spear. My above mentioned friend told me of his most scary experience as a monk: after accidently cutting himself he had to see a doctor, who turned out to be a female doctor. Since avoiding contact was not possible in a situation where immediate treatment was necessary, his worst fear was to feel anything. No sensation, in spite of contact … but isn’t that close to being dead? Training to feel like a corpse long before passing away? Not my cup of tea either, I will be dead soon enough and long enough for sure, no need to speed up the inevitable process by jumping to the last link right away!
What we can actively do in a healthy way is to change how we handle craving.
Sakura falling into the grass during our hanami party.
Sitting under a cherry tree in full bloom with the most pleasant company enjoying delicious food it is easy talking about impermanence and letting go. Yet asking the Sakura to stay as beautiful as today for me forever, so I can come back day after day, enjoy the sun, the warm breeze, delicious food and company? Not even tomorrow! Everything is happening just once, 一期一会 (ICHI GO ICHI E) and it will never come back.
Enjoying moment after moment to the fullest, and then let it go without remorse and longing: this is allowing and enjoying contact and sensation without clinging. Yet this is the very hardest Zen exercise of all.
Long ago, I was sitting on my pillow doing Zazen during a Sesshin in the very town my love split up with me just a week before. Very well I could compare the pain in my knees with the pain of an aching heart. Enduring hour after hour the distress of sitting cross-legged was the easy exercise, letting go the hard one.
Practicing ENSO at our Dojo.
Kazuaki Tanahashi described the Enso (Zen circle) as “miracle of the present moment”. When we paint the Enso at our Dojo, the result is always imperfect, shaky towards the end, not round and the paper ends up being recycled.
I painted thousands of Enso and none of them was perfect. I experienced dozens of times engaging in love the wrong way and none of doing it right. One day, when I am 95 or so, I want to experience the perfect love of letting go: maybe or not have the two of us meet again tomorrow, starting from scratch exploring the miracle of the present moment. When we are together, you are the love of my life. Yet we part, again and again, without constraint and remorse and nothing more than a promise: let’s try again tomorrow, let us try even better, painting once more the imperfect Enso of our present moment.
The secret of a happy life, the very link to break the chain of Pratītyasamutpāda is: try your very best, right now, and always let it go. And this, to my limited experience, is the hardest exercise in life. It is beautiful.
avenidas y flores y mujeres y
un admirador(Eugen Gomringer)
寝るときも
枕のしたを
水のながるる(吉井 勇 )
Auch habe ich (..) gefunden, daß alle wirklich kluge Menschen (…) darauf kommen und bestehen: daß der Moment alles ist, und daß nur der Vorzug eines vernünftigen Menschen darin bestehe: sich so zu betragen, daß sein Leben, insofern es von ihm abhängt, die möglichste Masse von vernünftigen, glücklichen Momenten enthalte.
(Johann Woflfgang Goethe / Italienische Reise)
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As a post scriptum, a piece I wrote a year ago under the title “Love Love Love” which I never completed into a blog post:
I wish I came across Prousts “Recherches” much earlier in my life. Not that I did not know about this masterpiece, but I cherished the stupid idea to read the 4.000+ pages, preferably in the original language, once I am old an grey. All magic and illusion, all mutual misunderstanding, projection and fantasy, all pleasure and abuse of “boy meets girl” (as well as boy meets boy and girl meets girl) is laid down in this monument of French literature. All you need to know for life … before you turn 100 years.
For too many years, instead of appreciating my various affairs as magic encounters with fascinating women, I used to see it as a never ending series of failures. Just for the one reason, that non of them lasted “forever”. It took me decades of detour through the slopes and valleys of Zen Buddhism until I began to understand that impermanence is not a flaw, a failure, but the very nature of life. Nothing lasts “forever”.
The magic of love is that it “just happens”. It is unavoidable, like the weather. Suddenly sun comes out, suddenly rain. Beautiful ever changing formations of clouds, followed by blasting sun and days after days of equally dim grey sky. I can just be there, enjoying the play of emotion or lack of, excitement and fading interest. Yet I can never get hold of it.