118: Zen versus Daily Life part two

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No Limit Zen
Just pay attention —
to everything in the now.
It’s all Zen practice.

Continuing our exploration of the various dimensions of daily life in modern America, and how we might more intentionally, and mindfully, carry over the insights and influences of our Zen practice, “applying“ them in a beneficial manner, I suggested that this process would necessarily involve turning a perceived negative into a positive, converting a confrontational approach to one of collaboration and complementarity.

That is, the perceived conflict between those special activities that we traditionally associate with what we call Zen “practice” — such as sitting in meditation — and those we categorize as “not practice” — such as, say, dealing with a bad boss — is just that: a perceived conflict, and not an actual one. As Matsuoka Roshi would often say, “There is no dichotomy in Zen.” The dichotomy is in the eye, or brain, of the beholder.

I place the term “applying” in quotes to create a caveat — in regards to Zen training in general, and to its relation to daily life in particular — to caution against implying that this constitutes the true meaning and value of Zen, reducing it to a transactional activity, like any other self-improvement routine. It bears repeating that adopting this attitude would amount to missing the point entirely, or what is traditionally referred to as “gedo Zen.” In looking up this phrase, I came across a rather curious website called The Encyclopedia of World Problems and Human Potential (the link to the page is in the show notes). It offered a fairly complete, concise definition of gedo Zen that reads:

This is meditative exercise practised for spiritual and religious purposes but outside the path of Zen, by exponents of other religions. It includes Christian contemplation and the various forms of yoga. It also includes the practice of meditation by followers of Zen who see meditation as a means of achieving supernatural powers and abilities rather than for the purpose of self realization or for the welfare of all. Although this implies a rather lowly achievement for members of other religions, less traditionalist approaches (esoteric rather than exoteric) admit that higher forms of meditation are possible even by non-Buddhists, since Zen is the basis of all reality and all religion.

That last line caught my attention, as I did not expect anyone commenting in a public venue to give Zen that much centrality in the scheme of things, especially in the realm or religion. Many do not consider Zen to fit the category of religion as an institution. Zen does not allow a separation of the sacred and mundane, for example.

However, all religions as well as philosophical systems must include attitudes and approaches to the mundane aspects of life, whether exclusionary or inclusionary, the extremes being “evil,” or “of the devil,” versus “good” or “holy,” and “of the divine,” for example. This language is not characteristic of the way we frame expressions of Zen.

In fact, it seems preferable to speak of Zen in an idiom free of such fraught, emotion- and belief-ladened vernacular. Zen insight is often spoken of as “nothing special,” and a return to our “Original mind,” rather than as some sort of religious epiphany. So better not to venture too far down that rabbit-hole.

Returning to what Charlotte Joko Beck referred to as “Everyday Zen,” in an influential book of that title published in 1989, we can set aside for the moment whether or not Zen is, or may become, your religion, in the sense of a fundamental worldview that embraces spirituality as a natural component of corporeality. Here, we are concerned more with the “how” of engaging Zen practice in an integrated way, rather than the “why” of it. Our design of this process may be more likened to a transfer of skill sets. Again, “doing my research,” as we like to say these days, the first result of about 640,000,000 brought me to a page at the Yale Poorvu Center for Teaching and Learning — again the link is in the show notes if you’d like to read for yourself:

“Transfer” is a cognitive practice whereby a learner’s mastery of knowledge or skills in one context enables them to apply that knowledge or skill in a different context. Because transfer signals that a learner’s comprehension allows them to recognize how their knowledge can be relevant and to apply it effectively outside original learning conditions, transfer is often considered a hallmark of true learning (Barnett & Ceci, 2002).

The link in the show notes will allow those with a special interest to pursue this item further. The phrase of interest here is the last, “transfer is often considered a hallmark of true learning.” Master Dogen somewhere says that Zen practice comprises the development of ”true intelligence,” or something to that effect.

Another mentor of mine, R. Buckminster Fuller, defines human intelligence in a similar manner. He says it is the ability to “extract the general principle from the many particular case experiences,” paraphrasing. An example is the concept of “fast” versus “slow.” The child finally “gets it” after being shown many disparate examples. Piaget promotes a similar principle in terms of learning in general.

In terms of the demands of daily life, which, when classified as “demands,” engender a knee-jerk resistance, I want to return to my prior comment that the process of Zen engagement may be characterized as turning a perceived negative into a positive.

Other common tropes suggesting this same attitude adjustment include “turning a push into a pull,” from the professional process of marketing products and services. This means public awareness of the item being marketed, creating a demand, so that the target audience seeks it out, rather than your having to put a lot of time, treasure and effort into ongoing promotion. Anyone wishing to know more about this is well-advised to look up “The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference” by Malcolm Gladwell.

For those whose “right” livelihood — remember the Eightfold Path? — may entail marketing their own skill sets to potential employers or clients, this may simply mean developing a creative way of targeting your resume to the right prospects, or finding the right headhunter agency to keep your potential for future recruitment alive.

Regarding and referring to an identified “problem,” as an “opportunity” instead, is another variation on this theme. Much of this can be considered, and somewhat lightly dismissed, as the long-lived meme of developing and sustaining a “positive mental attitude,” a concept credited to Napoleon Hill in his 1937 book “Think and Grow Rich.” This popular idea, coinciding with the birth of my older brother, became so ingrained in the zeitgeist that it is still known by its acronym: PMA. Note that the subtitle prescribes a method: thinking; and promotes an objective: growing rich; that would fall short of those in Zen. Which often claims to have no objective at all.

Another common cultural trope suggests looking at what appear to be “either-or” — mutually cancelling choices — into “both-and” potentialities; another example of converting a confrontational approach to one of collaboration and complementarity. An example would be the notion that we can either sit in meditation — or take care of business — but not both. Whereas, as we mentioned before, we can adapt aspects of the zazen posture; the breathing; and the undivided attention of Zen; to virtually any situation. As we like to say, both things can be true at once, however seemingly contradictory.

A further extension of this idea takes to a practical level Master Dogen’s admonition in Fukanzazengi—Principles of Seated Meditation:

Setting everything aside, think of neither good nor evil, right nor wrong. Thus, having stopped the various functions of your mind, give up even the idea of becoming a Buddha.

However, when we sit, especially in the beginning as a novice, and even later, when more mature in Zen, during the beginning of each zazen session, we find we cannot really set aside all everyday concerns by sheer force of will. They keep inserting themselves into our awareness, as if they have a life of their own. Which they do. We call it the “monkey mind” — that survival-oriented, automatic and autonomic function of the mind to harangue and harry us with mostly self-critical memories and anticipatory anxiety about the future. Occasionally an “aha” or “eureka” moment occurs, in the less-inhibited frame of mind engendered in zazen, a possible solution to a given problem.

So, as an eminently practical approach to setting aside everyday concerns, and avoiding the trap of worrying about forgetting our big idea, I recommend that meditators simply keep an open notebook — paper or electronic — at their side when sitting. Then, when something important occurs out of the blue, we jot it down for later, and return to zazen. In this way, we take care of business to a moderate degree, while allowing the meditative process to go deeper and deeper. Both things can be done at the same time.

In the next segment we will delve further into this process, taking on the first of the three “dispositions” of zazen, as Matsuoka Roshi referred to them, the posture. And how it can have a halo effect upon other situations in life, in which we assume different postures, depending on the circumstances. Meanwhile, keep on sitting.