..续本文上一页ometimes when you see the same karmic force, the same values and ideas, the same features, build and color as someone on the other side of the world.
Think of all the people who have the same feeling you have, maybe of failure or of anger at someone. Sometimes when we become very angry, we can do something about it in the situation, and sometimes we can”t. So who do you beat up
Guess. You know the answer—the closest one to you is yourself. And you do it even though you may not be aware that you are doing it. This is why we have to become softer. We just need to be kinder to ourselves because we deserve it. Why beat ourselves up
Isn”t it better to just let go of the dialogue
Let it go completely
We”ve been doing this for thirty, forty, fifty years. It”s very strong conditioning. And our compassion is the practice of unconditioning. We already have the discipline, and we already have the strength, so all we have to do is to let it go. Little by little allow the old story line to dissolve.
But it isn”t so easy. Even when we decide to take on the practice of acknowledging and letting go, we may fear that if we do let go, something terrible may happen to us. Probably something even worse. You may be in the present, but it can be quite frightening to be in the present. Let me assure you that being in the present won”t hit you like the first time you smoked marijuana or had some LSD or peyote or whatever new “designer drug” people are taking these days. It won”t overwhelm you like that because it”s organic. It comes from within.
When Hoitsu Suzuki Roshi went out for a smoke one day, Sojun Weitsman”s little boy asked him, “Roshi, what are you doing
” This is the ultimate Zen question you have to ask yourselves: “What are you doing
What”s going on
” If you do this, you will begin to not accept habit or impulse as your way of life.
When you are practicing, please remember that your breathing is very important. Even those of us who sit every day may forget to apply it, but do your best to remember the breathing. On the inhalation you take in some of the suffering—either your own or someone else”s—and on the exhalation you let it go. Repeat this three or four times: receiving and releasing, taking in and letting go. Then you may move from the personal to the universal. That”s it. Even if you”re not practicing this on an intense schedule, if you just practice it for a minute or two or three when you”re sitting or standing in your ordinary life, you will have some experience you can begin to rely on. This is true even when you”re doing it for someone who”s quite far away from you or who is dead. Try it. Do it for someone who is alive, someone you do not like or someone who is dying. It will also clean up your own negativity, your own karma. This compassion breath will burn it up.
Once I painted a traditional Zen circle made in just one stroke, known in Japanese as an enso, and wrote inside of it, “Breath sweeps mind.” Just the sound of the breath painted it. We can hardly hear our breath because we are so busy listening to our thinking all the time. Twenty-four hours a day, just the same. Are we that conditioned that we don”t get tired of it
You may say yes, but maybe you aren”t tired enough. You say you are, but I”m not convinced, because when you really are tired enough, you will change. Your behavior will begin to change, and you will take up this practice wholeheartedly. Life isn”t that long, and besides, no one else can do it for you. You”re the only one who can turn your lead, your heavy stuff, into gold. That”s all you have to do, and you can do it through the breath. That”s what we practice in zendo, and that”s what you can practice outside, in the bigger zendo, in action.
His Holiness the D_Lama has said many times that it …
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