PERFECTING THE PARAMITAS CONTEMPLATION 2010.7

In this, the seventh of the eight talks, we will take up the fifth of the Six Perfections,

Dhyana Paramita: Contemplation, or Meditation. In the Introduction segment, I pointed

out that contemplation, technically, can be considered a traditional form of meditation.

Meditative practices that preceded Buddhism we usually associate with specific methods

— posture, breathing control, and visualizations — requiring a special time and place, as

well as personal training with a master. Contemplation is usually of an object of some

sort — a teaching, or nature — a subject meditating upon an object. But how do we enter

into contemplation that has no particular object? Objectless meditation, or shikantaza, in

Japanese. And what does it take to develop a mode of meditation that is not limited to a

time and place, one that doesn’t take time at all, but in fact, gives us back our time?

Quoting Matsuoka-roshi from Mokurai, Chapter 3: Zen Mind is Ordinary Mind:

Practicing the Fifth Paramita, Meditation, will bring us to have that

Ordinary mind we talk about in Zen, so that the potential to become a

Buddha—enlightened one—will be realized in our lives.

Let’s look at the more traditional idea of meditation that is called contemplation. Perhaps

it will help to illuminate the difference in our Zen practice. In dhyana paramita, dhyana

has connotations of concentration; and contemplation, I believe, is its more technically

accurate interpretation. My limited understanding of contemplation, is that it was a

traditional form of meditation, prior to Buddha’s advent, in the Vedic and Yogic

traditions, later assimilated into Hinduism. Contemplation, as a method, is not the same

as thinking or analysis, but instead the simple, direct perception or awareness of

something, usually a tangible object.

It is possible, of course to contemplate, in the conventional sense of going over in our

mind, a written teaching, sutra or scripture, or a philosophical argument. But this usage,

more technically, would be along the lines of analysis and intellectual construction.

Contemplation as a meditation technique reduces itself to something much more direct,

much more simple. It is closer to what we consider Zen meditation to be, just simply

sitting, zazen or shikantaza. Contemplation of reality, we might say.

I believe we can understand the process in this way, when one is contemplating an object,

such as a beautiful flower, a plum blossom, or a branch of a tree, or even a work of art.

But most appropriately, a natural object. At first, of course, we have a head full of ideas,

some say a head full of useless information. We know, for instance, that the branch of the

plum tree is a natural object, and not man-made; we know that it is from a tree; that it is

in the vegetable or plant kingdom; that the tree also has a trunk, other branches, leaves,

roots, berries, blossoms, and bark; and that it goes through seasonal changes. We know

that the plum is one of many kinds of fruit-bearing trees such as apples and oranges;

many that we can list, depending on how deeply we have studied the subject. Likewise,

we know something of the cellular structure of the woody branch. We have seen

enlargements, under the microscope, of cross-sections of the branches. And we recognize

the different types of patterns and forms, such as the branching, so-called dendritic form,

or dendriform, that most trees, to one degree or another, usually manifest. We recognize

that it, somehow, is the same branching form that we recognize in the pattern of a river

with its tributaries, and that is found in many other examples of organic geometry that we

witness at different scales and dimensions of nature; the nervous system and circulation

systems of the body come to mind. Or one’s own hand, for that matter.

One can go on and on, with this kind of analytical, discursive thought process, and never

come to any substantive conclusion, about this plum blossom. Or, on into the color of the

petals and all of the colors of the spectrum manifested by other blooms and blossoms, as

well as the unspoken fact that blossoms are basically the reproductive genitalia of the

plant, pollinated by the interaction of bees or other types of pollinating insects; and that

this is one of an infinity of marvelous, symbiotic relationships in nature. On and on and

on, endlessly.

But eventually, in contemplating the same object again and again, we run out of thoughts

about it. And we recognize when the same old thoughts are coming around again, perhaps

in slightly different guise. After a while, we are no longer interested in our own thoughts

about the plum branch. The words plum branch have long ago lost any real meaning.

What we are contemplating, the familiar object, has become passing strange. We have no

idea what it is, really. At this point, our contemplation has become more like Zen’s zazen.

The familiar has become strange.

In the Japanese culture, there is a simple construct for the layers of thought, or mind,

called nen. All of the more complex, inter-related concepts, categories and so-called

higher-level thinking, such as those of science, mathematics, philosophy, geometry, et

cetera, are called third nen. This represents the most complex, interwoven ways of

thinking possible for most people, regardless of intelligence. Perhaps when it comes to an

Einstein, with his famous thought experiments, creating the theory of relativity; or Steven

Hawking and others, developing quantum theory, we might posit that there is a fourth

nen, which is far beyond even the complexity of third nen. In this model, in terms of

brain structure, we could draw a parallel between third nen and the outer cortex of the

brain, where all the higher thinking is said to occur. Einstein’s well-known, outsized

parietal lobes, we might hypothesize to be the locus of fourth nen.

In Zen practice, we enter the zendo in third nen. We bring our very busy mind, spending

all of our time conceptualizing, planning, relating, correlating, categorizing. And tied in

with the demands and constraints of modern life, a great deal of this busy-ness is focused

on the survival of the self; our economics, our jobs, paying our bills at home, putting the

kids through school, paying off our own education loans. And tied into anxieties about

this self; and by extension, our family, friends, colleagues at work, and so forth. One

huge, sticky ball of wax. Very difficult even to know where to start.

But in zazen, once we begin sitting, and continue for a while, the tendency of the monkey

mind to jump around frenetically and randomly, from one point of worry to another, like

a kitten worrying a string, begins to tire, and settle down. At this point, according to this

model, we enter into second nen.

Second nen might be visualized as residing just below the outer cortex, in the province of

the, say, more primitive inner brain, of a mammal or perhaps slightly lower; with

boundary areas in between, rather than hard and fast differentiation. In second nen, there

is less cross-categorization — less conceptual bubbles of mental froth — of complexity

piled upon complexity. There is still awareness of self and other, mind and body: simple

awareness of the wall we are facing, the cushion we are sitting on, incense in the air, the

light level. But less and less of a necessity to think about it. More of a comfort-level in

simply registering this present reality.

So, second level nen, we might say, is also more like the level of awareness of young

children, who have not yet learned the name of many things — let alone how all of these

things are inter-connected through phylum, species, place in the binomial nomenclature

of the biological world, minerals by classification, and so on — but are simply

experiencing, though the senses, the reality in front of their faces.

We are still in namarupa, one of the twelve links in the twelve-fold chain of

interdependent co-arising; still name and form, but not exaggerated analysis, nor overly

complicated thought process, about name and form. It is simply wall, person, zazen,

sitting, cushion. These labels may come to mind, but they have no particular, substantial

meaning, outside of plain recognition. And, in fact, if we think about the label, such as

wall, for some time, it definitely begins to lose its meaning. We see that it is a sound,

which we associate with this actual thing in front of us — that we call a wall — and yet

there is no real relationship between the sound, or the label, to the object being named,

the actual, concrete wall. And, of course, if we sit somewhere else in the zendo, the socalled

wall that we are facing isn’t even the same wall. This is another dimension of my

comment in the prior segment, Effort, that the wall in Zen is not actually the wall in the

zendo. It is in us. So even name and form, namarupa, which is a very fundamental

dimension of our consciousness and intelligence, begins to fall apart at this point.

Next, following the model, in first nen, even naming has fallen away. There is still a basic

awareness of being — that is of the being in the environment, even though those names

are not being applied — nonetheless the awareness is there. But all naming, all

recognition of such divisions in reality, has fallen away. Including, and most importantly,

perhaps, that of self and other, or mind and body. So at this point, a kind of unification

comes about, in which we can no longer even say that we are perceiving self and other,

mind and body, and so forth. If we think about these ideas, they will immediately

resurrect themselves. We know what we mean by the idea. But sitting in our Zen

meditation, they are no longer germane. They have little or no relevance.

So, this would be first level nen. In this peeling away of the brain, maybe we have moved

to the level of the primitive lizard brain, the reptilian mind, in which our instincts are still

intact. If somebody invaded the room in a threatening way, we would certainly and

instantaneously react. But the so-called higher, more complex levels of thinking have

settled down. We are still capable of them, but they have ceased, at least for the time

being, as the center of our attention.

Like a frog sitting on a lily pad, we are just sitting there, very alert, very awake. The frog

looks like it is asleep, breathing through its skin, by osmosis; absolutely still, eyes

seemingly closed. It is as if we have settled into a much more primitive state of mind, and

state of being. But if a fly suddenly flies by, instantly — so quickly that we can’t even see

it — the frog’s tongue lashes out, and in a blink, the fly is gone. So this is a very

deceptive state of awareness. It looks like the frog is sleeping, unaware, but actually it is

completely alert.

Similarly in zazen, everything — body, mind, seeing, hearing, feeling, even thinking —

has fallen asleep, in a sense, but we stay awake. The process of zazen is falling asleep,

staying awake.

Zen might posit that there is also a zero nen, a kind of ground level, perhaps a point at the

very center of the brain, at which even the subject-object, mind-body separation has, in a

sense, evaporated. The apparent boundary zone between self and other has become

ephemeral, diaphanous, so thin that it is no longer subject to our awareness. In this kind

of unification, we cannot even speak of consciousness, in the conventional sense.

In the original translation into English of the Heart Sutra that we used in my home

temple, one line says, until we come to no consciousness also, at the end of the list of

those things that fall away in meditation, the description of emptiness, or shunyatta. Here,

we could say that there is a zero nen, which we cannot even call consciousness. For there

to be consciousness, one entity, so to say, has to be conscious of something else, another

entity. Where there is no duality, no separation of self and other, mind and body, then one

would have to say that, that kind of consciousness no longer pertains. There is no

separate entity.

Now, this notion of nen is a metaphor, of course — an analogy to use — to understand

the process of sinking into Samadhi. It may be most simply thought of, as a profound

process of sensory adaptation, adapting to seeing, hearing, feeling, even to thinking. Once

we have penetrated to this kind of experience, where perhaps even the word experience is

not precisely accurate, then we can say that we have come to the end of contemplation.

We have taken contemplation as far as it can go, in which there is nothing, really,

contemplating anything else. This is shikantaza, just precisely sitting. We are sitting, we

have to admit, but that is not what we are doing, not the point, of zazen.

After this kind of process has been established — and it is a natural process, which, if we

sit still enough, long enough, will set in for anyone — then, any time we sit in zazen, we

more immediately, more quickly, find ourselves in this state of awareness. And, when we

leave the cushion, and go into everyday life, we find ourselves, relatively speaking, in

this same kind of awareness, much less inhibited by, or limited to, conceptualization,

categorization, planning, worrying, anxiety, and so forth. But still completely alert,

completely awake, and ready for whatever happens.

This is also important in daily life; important in the martial arts; and very important in

relationships. It gives us a chance to react to the situations that we face in daily life much

differently; for us not to react in our usual knee-jerk way, in which we generally make

things worse, waste more time, and find ourselves trapped in a never-ending cycle of

repetition, frustration and discouragement.

Beyond daily life, and back to the cushion, this attitude is extremely important to

penetrating to the depths of Zen. Like the frog, we sit without expectation, without

anticipation, but continuing to hold our aspiration to awakening, to direct insight. We do

not know what it is, by definition; if we did, we wouldn’t have the need or the aspiration

to practice.

Let’s explore what it may mean, how Zen meditation, in fact, can give us back our time.

The following will take some time to get back to Zen, so please bear with me.

When we look at how we usually spend our time, it is mostly worrying; planning;

regretting things we didn’t do, or things we did do that we shouldn’t have done. If you

are like me, a lot of your time is wasted second-guessing; spinning our wheels; plunging

into a project without sufficient planning or forethought, and then finding that we have to

back up, regroup, approach it differently. Or, perhaps, trash it and begin an entirely new

project. We do not usually recognize the futility of a line of endeavor soon enough,

unlike the world-class scientist we mentioned in the last segment, so we may spend a

great deal more time on a given effort than is warranted. In this and many other ways, our

activities can waste a lot of time.

Each project is set up in a compartmentalized way, such that it conflicts with our other

projects. And so, like a chicken with its head off, we run in circles, going from project to

project, responsibility to responsibility, pecking a little bit at this one, a little bit at that

one. Eventually a given project may seem to get substantially done. But in a larger sense,

they never really get done. The next project, whether at work, at home, or at play, is

really a continuation of the last project, just in a new phase. When we look at our life in

this way, we can see that we are massively inefficient, in terms of the way that we invest

our time and effort.

An experiment, one that you might try, in order to investigate your personal version of

this syndrome, is based on the idea that it takes us a certain amount of time to perform a

given task, and we know how much time it is. Next time you have a repeat task that you

have to do — one you are not looking forward to — it seems you don’t have the time; or

it is tedious or tiresome. This could be washing the dishes, or writing a letter you owe to

somebody. Filing, or paying bills. Get ready by getting out your stopwatch.

Anything that we are ambivalent about tends to loom large in our imagination when we

are anticipating it. We might think, Oh, I don’t want to do this; I don’t have the time, and

have so much else to do. But then, just for the sake of argument, or experiment, literally

time yourself — give yourself a start time, look at your watch; start, and don’t look at

your watch or clock until the task is done. You will probably be surprised at how little

time it actually takes to complete a familiar task. In our mind, we think of it as a bother,

a nuisance, something we don’t have time for right now, and so we imagine that it takes a

lot longer than it actually does.

If you can pay attention this way, timing yourself in various and sundry tasks that you do

from time to time — your more mundane, ordinary activities — you will probably find

that you waste more time thinking about them, worrying about them, or begrudging and

resenting them, than the actual time that it takes to complete the work.

A similar kind of phenomenon sets in when we look forward to a longer-term

commitment. Such as a vacation or holiday, especially with the in-laws. Or in Zen, a daylong or

week-long retreat. Or, take a more extreme example — a 90-day practice period,

or ango. Looking forward to this kind of event, again, looms large in the imagination. It

seems it will be difficult to take that much time out of our lives, to devote it to this one

event. And we worry that we will have regrets. Much as a given task, such as writing that

book we always meant to write, may also loom large, and seem almost impossible.

If you have planned a major undertaking for some time, such as writing a book, and have

difficulty initiating or continuing with the project, it may seem impossibly large,

insurmountably complex, in the early stages. Most consultants in this area have

suggestions for how to structure the process, to take on any large, intimidating project in

small bites. Back to the chicken, pecking away a bit at a time. If I cannot get myself to sit

down and write the Great American Novel, and get it done by dinnertime tonight; I can at

least, perhaps, jot down a mind-map, or an outline of all the things I want to write, or talk

about; and maybe I can get that done by dinnertime tonight.

All of these are, in a sense, techniques for tricking the judgmental monkey mind, for

countering the natural tendency we have to resist, to let our emotions, anxieties and fears

get in the way of simply doing what has to be done. Analysis paralysis, some call it.

Over-thinking everything.

It gets even more complicated when the projects and tasks that we are involved in include

a team of other people, with whom we have to cooperate, and coordinate. We have to

depend on others, in order to get anything done. Especially in those cases, we can find

our interpersonal relationships, emotional engagements, and misinterpretations of the

activities and motives of others, getting in the way, more so than when we work on a

solitary project.

All of these ideas, concepts about reality, and about how we function in reality, come into

play when we are considering our simple practice of Zen meditation. If we are aware of

these tendencies, then we can take measures to counter them, or at least recognize them,

when they come up. The monkey mind sometimes manifests as more of a badger,

badgering us with relentless self-criticism. We suffer, and then, blame ourselves for

suffering. Double jeopardy.

We may even find ourselves approaching our meditation practice, and our Zen practice in

daily life, in the same way. We may think that everything that we want to do, to support

our Zen practice, necessarily takes away from, and competes with, our responsibilities to

family, to work, to our own rest and relaxation, or entertainment. We continue to view

everything in the same, competitive framework.

This is partially, even largely, a product of relating to time in the measured sense. D. T.

Suzuki, the great Rinzai scholar and educator, in one of his early books introducing Zen

to the West, said that the invention of measured time was a great discovery by

humankind, because it allowed the development of agriculture, and the assembly line —

even the industrial revolution — based upon a linear model of cause and effect, time-andmotion

efficiency studies, et cetera. But at the same time, he pointed out that it was a

great spiritual tragedy, because people took this idea to be the way time actually is. Thus,

time became a commodity — something that can be gained or lost, something we would

try to save; and we certainly do not want to waste any time. Wasting time is considered a

major no-no, almost a sin, in our culture.

When we approach dhyana, meditation, in this way, we are, as Joko Beck says, doing one

thing the way we do everything. In other words, we try to fit Zen practice into the same

box that we have put everything else into, in our life; so that it is simply another

compartment that we have to manage, balancing out with everything else. And, as long as

we are slave to measured time, our perception of the experience of time is bound to be

distorted.

The nature of time that we invest in meditation, is subject to the same distortions as in all

the other areas of our daily life. We think we can gain time, lose time, save time, and so

on. Fraught with expectation in daily life, try as we might, it is difficult for us to sit still

and quietly, to approach meditation without expectation. Then, we become discouraged,

frustrated, and want to give up. Zen, zazen, we think, may work for others, for everybody

else, but it does not work for me. We become self-critical; this is where we begin to fulfill

our own expectations.

These expectations amount to, What would a guy like me do in a case like this? Well, I

would probably screw it up. One way or the other, we prove to ourselves our foregone, if

unconscious, conclusion, that Zen may be true, and it may work for everyone else, but

there is something wrong with me, personally. Somehow it doesn’t fit. We are looking

for the escape hatch. And sometimes, we think we find it. People think they can quit Zen,

even after years of practice. And, in a sense, they can.

But actually, in a larger sense, we cannot quit Zen. We cannot quit because we cannot

start, Zen. We cannot begin Zen practice. We are already doing it before we know about

it. Most people begin practicing Zen with the idea that they have heard something about

it; they understand that it is about understanding life, and so forth. So they think, I’ll go

check this out, I’ll practice Zen, and maybe I will learn something about life, which, by

the way, they are having difficulty coping with. And this is true, as far as it goes.

But after some time, there is a turning point reached, where we begin to see that, actually,

Zen is not about life in that way, but life is actually about Zen. That is, life is about what

Zen is about, as it turns out.

And so our initial reasons for engaging or entering practice fall away. We may be able to

articulate a different reason, from time to time, which may not make as much sense,

logically, as the initial reason. And so the process continues.

In Zen, it is likened to peeling an onion, this process. Buddha used a parable, or

metaphor, of a monkey peeling an onion, to illustrate this process. The outer layers of the

onion represent the obvious difficulties that we have in daily life. They translate into the

obvious reasons that we might enter into a practice such as Zen. As the monkey peels

away these layers to see what is underneath, naturally it finds more layers. And gradually,

more quickly peeling away layer after layer after layer, finally what is left in the

monkey’s hands, is what is at the center of the onion, which is, as we all know — if we

have ever peeled an onion — emptiness. On the ground is a pile of onion peels, all the

reasons we were investigating this matter, to begin with. They have all fallen away, fallen

aside, and here we are, left with the emptiness at the center of the onion. And, perhaps,

tears streaming down our face.

At this point in our meditation practice, we can no longer identify, in any logical way, the

reasons we are pursuing Zen. All the reasons have fallen away, and yet we still sit. There

may have been moments of insight, perhaps very shallow, or sometimes quite profound.

Amongst the pile of onion peels on the ground may be many of our habits, most all of our

concepts, and a lot of our opinions about daily life. The peeling away of which has helped

us to overcome our self-defeating, self-fulfilling wasting of time, energy, and enthusiasm.

At this point, we might say that we have learned something. But it is probably more

accurate, to say that we have unlearned something. Or, maybe, we have unlearned a great

many things, that we once thought to be true.

The point is, while doing zazen, Zen meditation — with no particular motive, no specific

reason — there certainly can be no wasting of time. Time can be wasted only if it is set

against a motive, a purpose, a desire, or expectation; that somehow we are not

accomplishing.

But fortunately, in zazen, we have the potential to sink into real time. That is, we have

the potential to set aside our wristwatch, our jailkeeper — even though, for practical

reasons, we may time our sitting. During the time that we are sitting, we can relinquish

this mental construct — our conceptual hold, our compulsive dependency — on

measured time.

Matsuoka roshi spoke of the eternal moment. This eternal moment is the time that we

enter into, when we sit in zazen. Someone said that sitting in zazen, the barriers of time

and space fall away. We’ve all had this experience, of time seeming to pass in the blink

of an eye, or taking forever, stretching out into an eternity, even though the measured

amount of time is about the same — a half hour, or an hour. On the cushion, this occurs

frequently. The apprehension of time — our direct experience of it — has less and less to

do with the average experience of time that we may recall — the familiarity of measured

time. Half an hour on the cushion may seem much more than half an hour. Or much less.

Once we have gone through the day retreat, the week-long sesshin, or the three-month

ango, looking back on them in retrospect, they seem diminishingly small, like no time at

all. So time seems to have this kind of Doppler effect, like the familiar experience of a

train coming toward you at the railroad crossing. The sound of the train, the train’s

whistle increases not only in volume, but also raises in pitch; and then, as the train passes

by, the pitch and volume both drop away. This is called the Doppler effect in sound; it

has a corollary in light, with the red- and blue-shift in the spectrum of light from galaxies,

moving away and toward each other, respectively.

In our conception of time, the way we think we experience or perceive it, there is also this

kind of effect, if only in our imagination. Things in the future seem to be much more

demanding, and difficult; and the amount of time comprised of a day, a week, a month or

three months, or even a year’s prison sentence; seems to be highly exaggerated. Whereas,

looking back at the past day, week, month, or year, seems compressed, shrunk down

virtually to nothing. This is also true of relatively brief events, daily practice of an hour or

so, but less so.

As we sit for longer periods of time, and over the passage of time — attending day-long

retreats or week-long sesshin — this re-tuning of time becomes even more extreme.

Until, gradually, we find ourselves sinking into real time, at all times.

This is the way that one’s meditation can serve to help one to enter into real time, the

eternal moment. In this eternal moment, all things have become possible. We have all the

time in the world; we have nothing more than time; time is all that we have. We have

been liberated from our conception of time, which was at the root of the trouble, the

cause, of our wasting so much time up until now.

This kind of freedom, or liberation, from measured time, is not the kind that is dependent

upon circumstance. The circumstances of our life may remain essentially unchanged.

What has changed is our view, our level of reactivity, our perception and conception of

our circumstances; including how much time we actually have, as opposed to how much

time we merely think we have.

Exploring this series of eight talks hopefully will bring about a mindset that opens our

awareness to this kind of real time, and to the dynamic reality of the Paramitas,

particularly that of meditation, as functioning vitally in our daily lives. By combining this

study with meditation, the depth and breadth of the meaning of the Paramitas will

become clear, in a way that is natural to you.

© 2010 Zenkai Taiun Michael Joseph Elliston

This document is protected by copyright restricting its use, copying, and distribution. No part of this document may be reproduced in any form by any means without prior written authorization of M J Elliston