The Zen Studies Podcast

The medicine of suchness is life-saving, because even the happiest and most fortunate human life inevitably contains suffering. Sometimes – in our personal lives or in the wider world – we face terrible things that arouse anxiety, depression, fear, despair, or rage, such as our climate and ecological emergency. Our Zen practice offers us suchness as a medicine that can alleviate our despair and help us access strength and gratitude.

This is the third installment of story about my personal spiritual journey. Check out episodes 174 and 175 for the first and second parts, which took me up to the point I left home to move into a Zen center. Today I’ll talk about my path to ordination as Zen monk and the next several years of junior training, including a time I call my “dark night of the soul.”

I’m on sabbatical for July but still wanted to release three episodes this month, so as a change-up I’m telling you a story of my spiritual journey (thus far!). In the last episode, 174, I talked about my early childhood up through my encounter with Buddhism at age 24. In this episode I continue the story up through my departure from the home life to do monastic practice.

It's July 2021, and although I'm taking a sabbatical from both my Zen center and my climate activism, I decided to release three episodes this month anyway. A change is sometimes as good as a break, so I figured I would change things up a little and share a story of my spiritual journey (thus far). I hope you enjoy!

The nature of true satisfaction is something explored by Zen master Dogen in his essay "Kajo," or "Everyday Activity." Using the imagery of having had rice, taking a leisurely nap, and living contentedly in a grass hut, Dogen emphasizes how true satisfaction is unconditional, and that we are nourished by the universe whether we are able to appreciate that fact or not.

Putting everything down is what we do in meditation and sometimes when we're practicing mindfulness in daily life. Caught up in things like worry, excitement, or anger, we often find it nearly impossible to put things down, but it is essential we create time and space to do so. It can help to remember that Zen practice is about getting comfortable repeatedly putting things down, picking them back up, putting them down, and picking them up.

I propose effective practice with any issue we face requires five things: Recognition of the issue causing stress or suffering; Faith change is possible though practice; Willingness to do what it takes to bring about change; Practice in the sense of actually doing something we think might help bring about that change, and Patience to keep walking the path of practice even if it takes longer than we’d like, or the results aren’t exactly what we’d hoped for.

Continuing with the case study of social action, I follow the discussion of Donald S. Lopez's article on whether Buddhism - in particular, the bodhisattva ideal - has much to offer in the domain of social action. Then I discuss why it matters to some of us that our faith tradition – whatever it is – encourages and supports the values we already hold, and what we might do about it when that isn’t the case.

As modern, mostly lay Buddhists we may seek encouragement and guidance from within the tradition for values we already hold. How much support does Buddhism actually give for things like social action, the importance of justice, honoring our connection to nature, enjoying our family and our daily lives, and learning to love ourselves? If we don't find support within Buddhism for our values, do we simply look elsewhere, or do we expand Buddhism?

In Zen we say practice is nothing other than your everyday activity. If we view the Dharma as something special – a particular activity we treat as more sacred, or a state we hope to attain that will be of an entirely different nature than the mundane existence we currently endure – we’re missing the point. At the same time, if we think practice is nothing other than just continuing our half-awake, habitual way of living, we’re also missing the point! What is the nature of our life and practice?

How can practice with mistakes - so we make fewer mistakes, but also so we aren't paralyzed by fear of mistakes, stressed out trying to avoid them, or stuck in regret or self-recrimination once we've made them? It helps to understand how mistakes are viewed in Zen. They're a sign you're actually practicing, and there's a sense in which this is no such thing as a mistake.

The annual Buddhist festival of Wesak celebrates the birth of Shakyamuni Buddha. The ceremony takes inspiration from the Buddha's mythological birth story, and I describe a version of the ceremony and share some chanting from it. Then I discuss the way Wesak helps awaken our gratitude for the Dharma, for teachers, and for all of those beings who have made our lives possible. 

The Buddhist precepts aren't just guidelines help us live moral and beneficial lives, they're also practice tools for studying the self. As Zen master Dogen wrote, “To study the Buddha Way is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be verified by all things...” When we're tempted to break precepts, it's a sign that our "small self" has arisen, and we have the opportunity to observe what's happening and explore new ways to respond.

Gratitude can be used as a practice to shift our attention from self-centered problems and complaints to an awareness of the miracle of simply being alive. It can help us be less reactive, depressed, anxious, and irritable, and more mindful and - frankly - happy. I explore the practice of gratitude and traditional Buddhist teachings about it.

The Lotus Sutra Parable of the Plants says that just as rain falls equally on plants big and small and each plant takes up what they need, so the Buddha shares the Dharma with all beings without any judgment or preference regarding their capacity, and each being receives what they need. I explore this message as well as the implication that there are indeed superior, middling or inferior practitioners and how this can challenge our ego.

If you practice Buddhism, it's natural to ask yourself, at some point, "Am I a Good Buddhist?" It's difficult to see ourselves as a good Buddhist when we fail to act in accord with our own deeper aspirations. And yet, according to Zen, no amount of practice is going make us into a Buddha, any more than you can polish a tile and make it into a jewel. So what is practice about?

Parinirvana, the death of the Buddha Shakyamuni, is commemorated by a ceremony in mid-February in most Buddhist communities throughout the world. The Buddha gave several important teachings right before his death, and there is teaching contained in the very manner and fact of his passing. In this episode I describe the Parinirvana (Nehan) ceremony in my lineage and discuss what we can learn from it.

For the sake of ourselves and others, we need to learn to Bear Witness without burning out. Bearing Witness means exposing ourselves to the suffering in the world in all its forms out of compassion. At the root of all suffering are the three poisons of greed, hate, and delusion, so Bearing Witness also means being aware of those forces in the world and the effects they have. This practice can be agitating and emotionally exhausting, so we need to learn how to do it without burning out.

Active receptivity is what we're aiming to cultivate in zazen, and in the rest of our practice. Despite the emphasis on what we’re NOT doing in zazen, it should lively and energetic activity, not passive. Think of putting aside your physical and mental activities in order to become incredibly quiet and receptive. Shhh! What's that? It’s like we’re surrounded by the music of a whole symphony that we usually can’t even hear because of our internal and external chatter.

Recent events show how deep a divide has developed within the United States. Those guilty of crimes need to be held accountable, but how do we repair the social fabric of our nation? It may help to renew cultural respect for the value of decorum: Dignified behavior according to social standards for what demonstrates a basic respect for one another’s humanity and acknowledges our mutual dependence. I discuss the teachings on decorum in Buddhism, and how critical it is to social harmony.