So, I’m not sure what this site will be, yet, probably more of the same.  And I have a lot of re-creating to do.  Until then, this site will be kind of messed up and disorganized for a while.   And maybe I’ll concentrate more on writing (I had a lot of pending posts to finish) rather than coming up with new site headers every few months.  Maybe.  Thank you to everyone who read and commented on my posts at DukkhaGirl.com (your comments probably made it over here).  Thank you to my many recent Twitter followers (I plan to edit my Twitter account and get back to doing some Tweeting).

CJ (formerly Perplexity)

At the time of this writing, I’ve been home from work sick for three days…but it’s giving me some extra time to rest – and get caught up on this blog.  It’s grey outside…but with Spring approaching here in just a couple of days, I’m hoping for some sunny weather…which is a lot to hope for around here.  Normally, I always feel a surge in my energy and motivation at this time – time to start spring cleaning, fix up the yard, do things I’ve been putting off during the winter months.

Sukha is usually translated as, “happiness,” “pleasure,” or “bliss” – not that I’m grasping at these things, or anything I’m more inclined to feel the sukha when the sun comes out.

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

“Kan-ji-zai-Bo-sat-su-gyo-jin-han-nya-ha-ra-mi-ta…”

Looking back, I think I first became interested in Buddhism because of the meditation practice.  Being a fairly anxious type, I hoped that meditation would help me be calmer and not feel so scared all the time.  I wanted to be able to throw myself into life completely, not listen to that constant nattering nabob of self-negativism that seemed to live in my head and evaluate every little thing I did as it was being done.  So I meditated.  And started reading about Buddhism.  So I learned about the other aspects of Buddhism, the philosophy, the ethics, and I learned that I…needed a Sangha.

Living in a big city at the time, I was in the (fortunate?) position where one could practically go “sangha shopping” – there were so many groups around, it made choice difficult.  I started going to the Tibetan center that was less than a mile from my house.  There, yes, I encountered meditation classes, classes on Buddhism, but also…chanting.  Oh, the chanting!  In this case, it was chanting, “Om mani peme hung” on a mala. Later I would visit Zen centers and encounter chanting that ranged from the robotic monotone of Rinzai Zen, to the more melodic chanting I encountered at a Korean center, to something that made me think I was in a Sunday church service ¹.  But it seemed that chanting was a constant I could not avoid.  With the exception of the Vipassana groups, chanting seemed to be a given if I wanted to participate in a Buddhist sangha.

After years of returning to solo meditation practice ², I would again return to sitting with a Rinzai group.  And, of course I,again, encountered chanting.  In Japanese.  In a language I don’t understand, but am making some effort trying to learn.  Oh, why all this chanting?  Why couldn’t I just sit zazen, listen to a talk, and have some tea, and be done with it?  What was the point of robotically intoning these incomprehensible syllables, and worse – doing it badly.

I was very tentative about this chanting thing.  I worried that I was off-key, that I wasn’t pronouncing things correctly, that my voice was bad.  I seemed to recall every little criticism everybody had ever given me about my singing – even though this chanting couldn’t exactly be called singing. I imagined that I sounded like Elmo, or a frog.  I found myself chanting the Lotus Sutra at 6 AM once thinking that my tongue felt like lead in my mouth.   Of course, the truth is that, most likely, nobody was giving my “bad” chanting much consideration.  At first I quietly mouthed along.

But, outside of the zendo, I started thinking about all this chanting.  And I remembered myself as an eight year old who would talk friends into singing with me for show and tell at school.  Later, in middle school, a friend of mine would recall, “You’d get up there with someone and they’d be singing really quietly, and you’d be really, really loud…”  The point is that I didn’t care.  I didn’t worry about how I sounded (I think I thought I sounded great), I wasn’t worried about my volume, or my being on key, or what everyone was thinking – I just got up there and sang.

I think that this is why many religious traditions say we should be like children – both Jesus says that one won’t enter the kingdom of heaven (which, in my interpretation means something akin to enlightenment) unless he becomes like a child, and, I believe, the Buddha also said something about being childlike, though I can’t find the exact quote or source right now.  When we are children, we have the ability to just throw ourselves into life completely, into whatever we are doing.  But as we grow up, we tend to lose that ability and become separate from our activities.  Our Zen practice, hopefully reduces that separation once again, allowing us to be like children in the activities that we do.

It doesn’t matter what we chant – I’m reminded of the Korean Zen master Seung Sahn, who said that chanting Coca Cola, Coca Cola was OK if you kept a clear mind.  The important part is that, when we chant, we let go, we become like children, we throw ourselves into it and just chant.  That is the point of all this chanting.  So, when you chant…

Open your mouth.

Get out of your own way.

Chant like a third grader.

Ah…the mischievous Barrel of Monkeys monkeys, the howler monkey, the meditating Rafiki, the malevolent screaming monkey with cymbals, and more…all aspects of my monkey mind that sometimes continues to rage uncontrollably, swing from thought to thought, or throw sh** when least expected, troubling me when I am trying to sit serenely in the land of no-thought.  I try to manage these monkeys throughout the day, but they still sometimes get the better of me.  Now that they have calmed back down after the holiday season, I may be able to get more blogging done.

Sometimes we start out with the best of intentions and the best of plans.  We get off to a strong start, but then something in our life derails those plans.  In my case (I suspect, like many other people), I’m better at starting projects than in seeing them through.  But I’m improving.  My sitting practice is regular, I regularly sit with a group – all goals that I was very sporadic about for some time.

But with blogging, I found I needed to take a break to keep my sanity during the winter months and the holiday season (also the birthday season in my household).  As was the case with some other bloggers I’ve read, I found I had to choose, for a while, between practice and blogging.

I had several posts I had meant to write between October and the New Year:  I was finishing one up about meditation, was in the process of writing one about gratitude, wanted to write one about the worst Christmas card I ever received ¹, and one about resolutions and goal-setting.  But exactly none of these were completed.

In early November, I went on retreat.  When I go on retreat, I usually have a small “realization” of some sort.  Usually it’s a pretty common-sense realization about something obvious but that I overlook, or read about, but don’t really “get,”  like when I used to read about practice = life, but then went around complaining that everyone was interfering with my “practice.”  When sitting, it just came over me that everything was practice, and changed my perspective, just a bit, though I still need to remind myself of this all the time.  This time, I dawned on me, again, that THIS is IT, and that my life needed attention.  I was loving blogging, but that my physical self needed more attention, and my family needed more attention.  Since then, I’ve lost those 10 pounds I wanted to lose, am exercising regularly, and feel like I’m taking better care of others, too.

I now feel ready to get back to blogging, but may take it slower with fewer posts, and I may not be able to read and keep up on tweets as much as previously.  I had a couple of blogging resolutions ² for January I’m finally catching up on:  to catch up on my twitter followers (done), to post a new header (done), to write a post like this (done), to start posting some quotes again (in process- plan to start Monday), and to edit and finish one of my posts (in process) – and to stay in balance, keep sitting, and keep exercising as I do so.

Sometimes my thoughts take me to the fantasy world of unicorns and fairies instead of down the hole. But whether positive or negative, my fantasy thoughts take me out of the present, and are just as unreal.

In which DukkhaGirl examines the wacky thought processes that send her into deep dukkha…

So, you’re trying to practice Zen.  Not just on the cushion, but in everyday life.  This is Zen practice, being here and now, right?  You’ve probably heard that Zen is not about self-improvement, becoming a “better person”, becoming less anxious, but blah, blah, blah, yada, yada, yada…this is why you started Zen practice in the first place.  You hope that maybe you’ll get to the point where you’re totally in the moment and practice just to practice, but – damnit ! –  you have to admit that you became interested in Zen because you saw yourself as a totally messed up person, but had hope that Zen would make you ________________ (fill in the blank – peaceful, tranquil, less anxious, more compassionate, enlightened, happier, hipper, cooler,  poetic, totally integrated and actualized…).  And maybe you are noticing some “side benefits” of your practice.  The people at work note that you are a person who seems calm and takes constant change in relative stride.  You yell at your family less.  You are able to “just do it” throughout your day without all the resistance you used to have – you still have preferences, but you’re able to do less “picking and choosing” and to just do what needs to be done.  You are on the way, right?  Next stop enlightenment city?

Think again.  This is when it happens. This is my day at work a few days ago.  Maybe you are not as neurotic as I am.  But just when I think I am starting to rock being in the here and now, a simple word or event can start snowballing into a downward spiral of thoughts which can turn into a pervasive avalanche of delusions.  I heard that Carl Jung said that, “Neurosis is the absence of legitimate suffering.”  Sometimes when I don’t really have any “legitimate” suffering in my life, it seems I need to drum some up.  We like our dramas – even the ones just in our heads.  They keep life interesting (maybe), but take us out of the here and now.

What happened is something like this:

At my job we work in “teams” of two primary team members, sometimes with a few other people involved and we are supposed to have a weekly meeting to discuss the “projects” we are working on.  However, due to staffing issues with my particular job, I’ve been on many other projects and unable to attend to my primary one.  Result:  our team has often not been meeting.  On the day of our usual meeting this week, I asked my teammate if we were going to meet this week.  The response? Something like:

“I don’t really see the point, you’re really not up to date on this project, anyway, but we can meet if you want.”

This was a very realistic, true statement.  I wasn’t up to date, and my co-worker would not have benefitted from this meeting.  Being very Zen-like and everything, I accepted it with great equanimity and acknowledged the truth of the statement, and agreed that we really didn’t need to meet.

Then a little thought slipped in:  “You don’t know what’s going on – and you should…it’s your responsibility.” (Discounting the fact that I’ve been too busy to do other than I’ve done).

Then my monkey mind grabbed hold of that thought and started to swing, and the fun began:

“He thinks I don’t have anything valuable to contribute.” (mind reading)

“Well, you don’t have anything valuable to contribute.”

“Meeting with me would have been a total time-waster…but he probably thinks it always is.”

“He thinks I’m a total airhead!”

“He doesn’t like me.”

“He wishes he had a different team member.”

“Who cares what he thinks!!!  Arrogance!” (sour grapes)

“Wow!  It’s a wonder that the University of ______ turned out such shining examples of (insert job title here) as me.  ” (sarcasm and self-criticism)

“I shouldn’t even be doing this job.”

“I’m an awful person.” (grandiose sweeping statement of self-worth, with sniffling tears beginning to form)

and then…realization of what I was doing.  Then the next thought starting to creep in.  “Ugh, I’m doing it again…I’m a horrible Zen student!”

But I was able to stop the next rollercoaster ride of thoughts right there.

One little thought led to another and to another until I was making overarching generalizations about myself, my job performance, my self-worth.   But here’s the important part – this time I was able to see the bullshit.  I was able, at some point, to catch myself and refute the logic of this argument ¹.  I was able to see the unreality – most of these thoughts were what many of our thoughts are – pure fantasy.

There’s an oft-quoted poem by Portia Nelson about recovery from addiction, that could apply equally to any of our habitual responses to life ².

There Is a Hole in My Sidewalk
Autobiography in Five Short Chapters

Chapter One
I walk down the street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I fall in.
I am lost…I am helpless.
It isn’t my fault.
It takes forever to find a way out.

Chapter Two
I walk down the street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I pretend that I don’t see it.
I fall in again.
I can’t believe I am in this same place.
But, it isn’t my fault.
It still takes a long time to get out.

Chapter Three
I walk down the same street.
There is a deep whole in the sidewalk.
I see it is there.
I still fall in…it’s a habit…but,
My eyes are open
I know where I am
It is my fault.
I get out immediately,

Chapter Four
I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I walk around it.

Chapter Five

I walk down another street.

We all have our own particular holes that we fall into.  My own particular hole has been this type of thought process that can lead me into the downward spiral of depression.  That is — if the thoughts go unquestioned ³.  There’s a bumper sticker that says ⁴, “Don’t believe everything you think.”  I’m learning to be aware of when my thoughts are about to drop me down the hole or take me on a wild ride to fantasyland ⁵…somewhere between chapter two and three.

Is this Zen practice or is this cognitive-behavioral therapy?  Maybe some of both.   I see the process as similar to when we sit on the cushion and bring our minds back to the present again and again when our thoughts drift off.  We begin to be able to catch this drifting off sooner and sooner as it happens instead of getting lost in it.  This is training for the multitude of times that we do this when we are off the cushion –catching our attention as it drifts off –whether it be down the hole or fantasyland — and bringing our attention back to the here and now, stopping the series of irrational thoughts that are the cause of much of our dukkha.

This postcard was posted today on PostSecret.  “I’m a Nihilist Trapped in a Buddhist Body” (spelling corrected) is a curious statement.  Why is this person trapped?  What is trapping him (or her)?  Why is his body seen as “Buddhist”?  Why not just say, “I’m a Nihilist,” instead of clinging to Buddhism if it makes this person feel trapped?  I wish I could ask this person for more clarification.

There seems to be a frequent confusion between nihilism – the denial of existence and the absence of meaning, and the Buddhist concept/doctrine of emptiness – the lack of inherent independent existence of things…that is interdependence – often get confused with each other.  One concludes in the ideas that nothing matters, the other in the idea that everything matters because everything is connected.

Or maybe this person is encountering doubt – something that I encounter again and again, and I think all of us encounter.  Times when our practice seems to just be “going nowhere.”  “Why am I doing this?” we might ask, “sitting on this cushion is a big waste of time.  Meaningless.  I’d be better off ______________(fill in the blank).”  In Zen practice we talk about great faith and great doubt both being necessary for awakening – and great determination.  It takes great determination to keep going, get on that cushion every day.

I hope this person resolves his inner conflicts in a way that is compassionate toward himself.  When we’re feeling trapped, we’re usually the ones trapping ourselves.