Our Zen practice is not about sitting on a cushion hour after hour gritting our teeth in order to get some particular experience or enlightenment. That is just exhausting. And futile!
Meditating to get something implies that there is something we lack and that we need to seek something to fill the lack - something we call happiness, fulfilment or enlightenment. This gaining-attitude may help in acquiring knowledge for biology or history but it doesn’t get us far with meditation. And the reason it doesn’t work in meditation is because the sense of lack springs from the point of view of the limited, apparently-separate, self – the very self that our meditation is designed to loosen. Of course it is inevitable that there will be a sense of incompleteness in the incomplete self – how could it be otherwise! So we don’t need to trash that feeling, instead we can use it to motivate our meditation. But, as we proceed, we soon see that the idea of achieving or finding anything in meditation becomes counter-productive; not only is it based on the ‘small self’ but it actually subtly reinforces it – so we find ourselves measuring our practice against a false goal; we compare and judge our practice, we become discouraged or frustrated or falsely encouraged, and the whole thing gets complicated. Our task in meditation is to see what is happening. And, when we see this achievement-pattern happening, we have an opportunity to correct the view that underpins it. It is here that the traditional Zen teaching can help.
Zen starts from a completely different place – from the perspective of the complete self, that which we call the ‘true self’, the truth that is present when the incomplete self disappears. We begin by accepting that there is no need to seek anything - that things are complete as they are, that we are an indivisible part of this whole, and that it is the true nature of things to be like that. This means that in our meditation we are not trying to achieve something that is not already there, we are no longer trying to manipulate the world to suit us, we are no longer attempting to become something that we are not. Instead, we are just letting go of the ‘small self’ and returning to what we most naturally are, to the self that has no name, that which manifests when we surrender totally to the moment. When we sit like this, we sit as a Buddha (a person already complete), not as a person trying to become Buddha. And meditation then becomes an expression of our natural way of being; something that is uncomplicated, light, compassionate and enthusiastic.
In Zen we often read that the world is ‘perfect as it is’. As in all Buddhist teachings, this is not a dogma to be believed or a statement of ‘objective fact’; it is an invitation to find out something for ourselves. So the question arises, ‘If everything is already perfect, why meditate?’ The answer is that we need to do formal meditation because we have not yet found this statement of inherent perfection to be true in our own lives – we have not yet attained it. So we meditate. We take the opportunity to see if the statement is true. We simplify our life, we sit down quietly inside our experience and see what is going on. When we do that, if we persevere at it, we will find that from time to time we simply sink contentedly into our experience. We can sit in the world as if it were an armchair, lacking nothing, needing nothing, experiencing life as sufficient and complete – as ‘perfect.’ In this way the limited self has already gone on holiday. And then we will have attained the statement, ‘The world is perfect as it is.’ That is our meditation.
Of course all things are in flux, so that experience of completeness doesn’t stay with us and we will return to the world of concepts and separation, to the habit of thinking about everything and trying to analyze everything in order to comfort us and suit us. But we will now carry with us the memory of the wholeness that we felt. And that makes all the difference. We act in the conventional world but are not so attached to it; we can let it go and immerse ourselves into the world of completeness. Then our lives can move freely between the two worlds – the conventional realm where the limited self functions, and the realm of totality where the small self disappears into the whole. And the key to this freedom of movement is non-attachment – don’t stick anywhere, don’t cling to either the self or to enlightenment, just open your eyes and see what is before you. Aah – the rain is falling outside the eastern window!
