no such thing as self cartoon

Source: Shambhala Sun. Click picture to go to link.

A couple of months ago (showing just how slow I am at getting to writing posts on this blog), I came upon a tweet stating, “If we are unwilling to give up the hallucination of who we think or feel we are, we have no business practicing Zen.  1.”

No business practicing Zen?

I felt my muscles tighten slightly, indicating a reaction of some sort.  I found myself feeling kind of irritated.  Why?  What was bothering me about this comment that I kept coming back to it, and that I’m, finally, coming back to it two months later?

Dogen famously said, “…To study the self is to forget the self, and to forget the self is to be enlightened by the ten thousand things.”  Yes, to see through the delusion of self is at the heart of Zen practice.  Zen practice is all about letting go of our fixed notions of who we think we are – I think this is one of the things that drew me to Zen practice in the first place.  Much of my life I’ve been very self-conscious – before I came into Buddhism, I used to tell myself I needed to, “learn to get out of my own way.”  I didn’t realize how right I was.  The constant thought of self is limiting; we cannot become one with what we do if we are constantly self-evaluating, or worrying about our appearance, or saying, “I can’t because I’m not the kind of person who…”

But this self is very stubborn.  It can take a long time to get to the point where we are truly willing to give up our fixed ideas of self.  This is a lifetime practice.  And this, I think, is where I have difficulty with the above statement.

There seems to be a tendency for some of us to label ourselves as “bad Buddhists,” even when we are practicing consistently and to the best of our ability.  There seems to be ideas out there about what, “good buddhists” do that are impossible to live up to 2.  Statements about people who have, “no business practicing Zen,” can be discouraging for those just starting out, or those of us who tend to put ourselves into the, “bad Buddhist,” camp, or who are subject to thinking that our practice is not “good enough,” or, “not OK.”

Charlotte Joko Beck pointed out that our practice is perfect right where we are, right now (I wish I could find the exact quote again) – where else could we be?  I think the comparison was with swimming — when we are starting out, or at an intermediate level, we don’t expect to dive like Greg Louganis, do we?  Similarly, we may find that our tenacious clinging to self grows weaker with time and practice, and that our willingness to get over ourselves increases – but, I think, this willingness is on a continuum, and it’s important to not be too harsh with ourselves or others for attachment to self.

I think that, really, the best Zen practice is to just accept ourselves, and others, wherever we are right now in our practice; with all our clinging to self, weaknesses, foibles, ups and downs, monkey-mindedness, while consistently practicing day to day.  We cannot judge another’s practice (well, at least I can’t).  We are all OK where we are.  I think anyone who is willing to practice zazen consistently has business practicing Zen.  We may still cling to delusions about ourselves, but maybe they’re just a bit weaker day by day, maybe we apply our practice to more and more aspects of our lives everyday, and,day by day, maybe our practice gets us that much closer to that willingness to give up our self-delusions 3

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  1. Please note, the author of this tweet is one of my favorite Buddhist bloggers and I generally really appreciate his blog and what he has to say.  I just found myself having a reaction to this, and other similar comments I’ve heard elsewhere that made me want to write about it. ↩
  2. See this post at Smiling Buddha Cabaret for examples of this type of thinking. ↩
  3. I do want to add, though, that I’m not saying everyone should practice Zen, or Buddhism.  Additionally, an additional quote I read from Joko Beck brings up the question of whether practice can be a waste of time if practice doesn’t encompass our whole life:

    So there are two questions.  The first is, do I understand the necessity for practice?  And by that I do not mean just sitting zazen.  Do I understand the necessity for my whole life to be practice?  And the second is, do I know what practice is?  Do I really know?  I’ve met people who have been doing something for twenty years that they called practice.  They could better have been working on their golf stroke.

    Charlotte Joko Beck, Everyday Zen

    My teacher made a comment something to the effect that if we’re not able to apply practice to our whole lives, that these things we do just become another “exotic asian practice.”  Still, I find that if I get too “judge-y” with myself over my practice, it just leads to more grasping, more self-clinging, etc…better to just sit every day, try to take things one step at a time every day, try not to compare myself too much, and try not to worry too much about what “level” of practice I’m at. ↩