UnMind 40. Metta Sutta Quartet 4: Standing or Walking

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It doesn’t matter
what posture you may adopt —
the truth is the same.

The fourth and final stanza of the Metta Sutta brings us back from the global to the personal, but wraps up with a promise that we may benefit from this way of Zen, but only on a universal level:

Standing or walking sitting or lying down
During all one’s waking hours let one cherish the thought
That this way of living is the best in the world
Abandoning vain discussion
Having a clear vision
Freed from sense appetites
One who realizes the way will never again know rebirth
In the cycle of creation of suffering for ourselves or for others

“Standing or walking, sitting or lying down; during all one’s waking hours, let one cherish the thought that this way of living is the best in the world” needs a bit of unpacking. It contains a couple of ideas that are basic to Buddhism, and to Zen in particular. With Zen’s emphasis on zazen, including aggressively long retreats, seemingly endless sessions of strict upright, seated meditation, and little else of interest going on in between, Zen teachers seem to be suggesting that, if possible, we should all be sitting in meditation 24/7.

Of course, in a monastic setting, there literally may be little else to occupy you on a daily basis, than to dedicate yourself wholeheartedly to meditation, which is what you are ostensibly there for, after all. But this statement from Buddha — who was no slacker when it came to meditation — says that the meaning and manifestation of the practice cannot be limited to sitting, which is only one out of the four cardinal postures, but must carry over, or at least have a halo effect, upon all of our activities, 24/7. Or if not 24/7, at least during all of our “waking hours.” It is also worth noting, as is obvious from a cursory study of the history of Buddhism and Zen, that even the hours we spend sleeping and dreaming, or in half-awake states of awareness, also constitute the raw materials of meditation. Otherwise, why would even lay followers of Zen engage in sitting up all night? We are consciously studying consciousness through our consciousness, after all. Zen recommends an all-inclusive approach.

That we are to “cherish the thought that this way of living is the best in the world,” suggests that we should not let our doubts get the better of us, when we witness the ways of the world — the endless pursuit of happiness, wretched excesses of consumption of pleasure — and even those ascetic practices that go to extremes in the other direction. Buddha had been there, done that. But we do not tout the Zen lifestyle as something from which we take personal pride — perish the thought.

“This way of living” was the Middle Way, which did not necessarily stress moderation in all things, particularly in the pursuit of meditation. But even in Buddha’s times, social and peer pressures to second-guess one’s personal choice to join the Order — in itself not a simple flip of the coin — must have been immense. It meant leaving behind the comforts, such as they were in those days, of family and friends, house and hearth, status and inheritance. Nowadays, establishing a group of people who voluntarily put themselves at the mercy of strangers — basing their business model on the begging bowl — would rank up there, in the spectrum of bad choices, with the aspiration to be a professional poet; or the futile hope that we may finally witness a truly bipartisan approach to governance in our lifetime. Idealistic and well-intended, maybe, but never going to happen. Don’t quit your day job.

“Abandoning vain discussion” does not suggest that all discussion is in vain, but that we should abandon all discussion that is not germane. What is important to discuss, in the Zen life, is Zen — along with its ramifications in all other dimensions of life; see: Noble Eightfold Path. Buddha was said to have considered all the fascinating discussions — e.g. of first causes, and ultimate finalities — to be not only mere speculation, but specious. The parable of the arrow covers this idea in dystopian detail: the thing is to pull the arrow out, so as to get well soon — rather than insist on finding out everything about the person who shot you, what kind of bow was it, et cetera. Keep your eye on the prize. There is not a lot of time to waste on trivial pursuits.

“Having a clear vision” similarly implies that our vision can be clouded, e.g. by the various distractions implicit in questioning the thought that “this way of living is the best,” engaging in “vain discussion,” and the shout-out to resisting the seductions of “sense appetites” that follows, below. The various temptations of the flesh must have been sufficiently ubiquitous and appealing in Buddha’s day, to require continually keeping one jaundiced eye on them, whilst simultaneously accenting the positive benefits that accrue to a life of spiritual poverty.

“Freed from sense appetites” likewise suggests an accomplishment that, like charity, is its own reward. Finally putting down, once and for all, our knee-jerk reaction to every impulse of the body, mouth and mind — to go panting after every new shiny object that pops up in the sensory world, acquiring or consuming it; and experiencing the predictable buyer’s remorse, humiliation and regret, indigestion, or hangover that follows — is a worthy aspiration. If nothing more, it would guarantee that our limited resources, external and internal, would not be squandered again and again, expecting different results. That way lies insanity. Zen promotes complete sanity. And sobriety. Same thing.

Permit me an aside. In business, particularly in professional applied design, research and marketing circles, there is a well-worn acronym, used to analyze the problem and process of successfully launching and promoting anything, particularly a new item, product or service, in a market saturated with a surfeit of similar offerings. Plus, in the context of messaging clamor constantly assailing the potential buyer. How to cut through the clutter? Your particular entrée on the smorgasbord of choices on offer may have certain unique features — hopefully including a winning price point — that may make it sufficiently attractive, even in the hyper-competitive climate that is the U.S.A. market. However, people do not buy products based on features, partly because they do not always understand them. So whatever features your new idea has, they must be translated first into competitive advantages, and then expressed as benefits to the end-users. Thus, the F-A-B triangle — “FAB!” — a tool for transforming familiar features into advantages over the other guy’s, rendering them as recognizable, fabulous benefits, for the buyer. Anyone who pays attention to advertising can see this formulaic emphasis, illustrated by melodramas of unhappy people magically transformed into happy people, simply by buying what we are selling. As in the old Zen saying, “Selling water by the river.”

In presenting the proposition of taking up the way of Zen — in contrast to other choices out there — we may want to employ a similar analysis. We can compare features of Zen practice, such as zazen, to the alternatives, perhaps even highlighting some competitive advantages. But can we translate Zen practice into concrete benefits, i.e. that we can guarantee? The claims of early Buddhism to such unearthly rewards as liberation — being free from the wheel of birth-and-death; or the consolation prize of being reborn into better circumstances in the next go-round — we may regard as attempts to articulate just what the payoff would be, for giving up ordinary life-goals and joining the Order. A hard sell. As lay practice householders, however, we may want to apply a slightly different calculus today, as we say.

“One who realizes the way will never again know rebirth” is the closer here, expressing a universal benefit, a transcendent guarantee, that seems to hark back to early Buddhism’s promise of dwelling in Nirvana, instead of being reborn back into Samsara. However, the last line throws a wrench into those particular works, a caveat that is not to be overlooked, if we are to understand Buddha’s intent.

“In the cycle of creation of suffering, for ourselves or for others” specifies the particular kind of rebirth that “one who realizes the way” will never again know. In doing so, it counters the alternative reading that such a one will never know rebirth of any kind, whatsoever. Never quote “never” out of context.

In fact, Buddha’s birth and life are the shining examples of this life-and-death spanning idea. He was al least partially enlightened in several lifetimes before his historical birth, under the prehistoric buddhas, if we are to believe his own testimony — and why would he lie? Then, when he was born in this latest and last lifetime of record some 2,500 years ago, it took him until his mid-thirties to wake up — yet again. This comprises a sober warning to us, of the extent to which the birth — okay, rebirth — process wipes out any residual memory from prebirth experience, and illustrates the depth of entanglement of the new karmic causes and conditions of our new existence, in this present lifetime.

Siddhartha Gotama may not have been reborn “in the cycle of creation of suffering,” but he did not know it, apparently, as it took him nearly half of his lifetime to figure that out. Until that night under the bodhi tree in Bodh Gaya, he was definitely submerged by the things of the world, and his father had dearly wished that he take on the burden of riches, et cetera. So he was clearly suffering for himself, to the point of desperation, and had probably created considerable suffering for others along the way, notably his poor father, not to mention his mother who died shortly after giving birth, as well as his aunt, who raised him, and later, his wife and son. Karma is not individuated, but entangled. It comes bundled with the operating system.

So this concluding line suggests that the issue of being reborn — or not — may be moot. That is, rebirth may heedlessly continue for others, and may for ourselves, in spite of whatever our personal take on it may be. The implication here is that we might possibly be reborn as bodhisattvas, as was Buddha. But it is also true that we may not realize it, and it may take our whole lifetime to wake up to the fact (time and time again). It is not as if we really have a conscious choice, to decide whether or not we want to be reborn. And if we did, what FAB analysis would we apply to that problem-definition and decision-making process? Can we assume that we even know what the alternative on offer is?

May all beings be happy. Rebirth or not.