..续本文上一页 be, and breathing.
Most of the stuff that is going on in our mind is not about what is happening right here and right now. Check it out sometime and see: most of the stuff that is going on in your mind is either chasing after the past or chasing after the future. Or worrying about the future and regretting or chewing over the past incessantly. And figuring out who to blame for all our difficulties. It takes a long time to realize that there is no one to blame and to be willing just to be here.
I was invited recently to participate in a spirituality discussion group. My friend said the group was going to be giving attention to what we do in situations where there has been some real loss, where things are never going to be the same again. Someone you know and love has died; you have had a serious illness or an accident. Something has occurred that feels like a terrible loss that can”t be recovered. How do you work with those circumstances
Some of the people there had experienced losses which they could relate to the question, but the discussion was really about how our lives were going now and about how to arrive at a sense of ease or a feeling of composure in our lives. One person said, "Things are going pretty well for me now, but I just noticed today that even though everything is fine I have this kind of worried uneasiness, not about anything in particular, and it seems strange when everything is going fine."
The teaching that there is suffering in the midst of joy was right there in what he was saying—the worried uneasiness that although everything is fine now, something might happen and it won”t be fine. Have any of you ever had that kind of experience
It is a very common human experience.
We have all kinds of ways of imagining the future that distract us from actually living in the present. What just sitting, what zazen is really about, is living in the present so that we can actually manifest this precious life in a way that feels right, a way that is consonant with our inner understanding of the dharma, of the truth. Shortly before he died, William Butler Yeats said, "If I had to put it in a single phrase, I would say that one can live the truth but one can really not know the truth, and I must express the truth with the remainder of my life." I can live the truth but cannot know it, and I must express it with the remainder of my life.
Dogen Zenji, the Japanese founder of this particular stream of Zen, said this about the precept "I vow not to disparage the Three Treasures (Buddha, Dharma, Sangha)": "To expound the dharma with this body is foremost. Its virtue returns to the ocean of reality. It is unfathomable. We just accept it with respect and gratitude." It is unfathomable. We cannot know it. The inconceivable really is inconceivable! But we still try to find a way to grab onto it.
In his lecture in the San Francisco Zen Center”s "Buddhism at the Millennium”s Edge" series, Stephen Batchelor was talking about a willingness to live in perplexity, a willingness to live in the realm of not knowing. This is quite difficult. We can expound the dharma with this body, we can live the truth; we just can”t grasp it. We can feel in our body when we are out of line with it. That is why Kobun Chino says it is such a big responsibility that naturally a person sits down for a while. We want to attune ourselves carefully to our body and mind so that we can notice when we are out of line with our deepest intention. We want to cultivate that intimate knowing without words and ideas—an intimacy with ourself—so that we can tell if we are living our life the way we really want to or whether it is just a little off.
We can do this by just tuning in with ourself, with our fundamental human nature, which is sometimes in Buddhism called buddhanature. Suzuki-roshi says a human being practicing true human nature is our zazen. Buddhanature is not something mysterious or arcane. Buddha just means awake; one who is awake. We find out how to be awake and to align ourselves with our true intention, with our true being, with the wisdom and compassion that is already inherent in each being, including ourself. No one is the one single exception to the fact that all beings are Buddha. We are not that special!
Blanche Hartman is the former abbess of the San Francisco Zen Center.
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