Attention!

I’ve decided to share Sogyal Rinpoche’s teaching, even though he may have done bad things. I don’t know. I wasn’t there. And who am to judge anyway? I’m sharing it because the teaching is feeling helpful to me and because it might be helpful to you.

“Attention! Attention!” So much of Zen practice is about learning to pay attention. We begin zazen practice by paying attention to our breath. Strangely, my first teacher, Kyudo Nakagawa Roshi, was the only one who paid any attention to my zazen. Since Kyudo – I sat sesshins with him for two years in the early 90’s – I’ve been basically on my own with my meditation practice.

Like most beginners, I began by counting, exhalations from one to ten, over and over again. Kyudo told me that Japanese monks just count their breath for seven years. Although that seemed a very long time, I ended up counting my breath – with a six-year hiatus for koan study – for 30 years. When I finished koan practice, no one told me what to do next, so I went back to counting. It didn’t occur to me to do anything else. I didn’t ask for direction. None was offered. During Covid isolation, I finally let go of counting and went on to following my breath – in our tradition the step that follows counting –  with the intention of putting 100% of my attention on my breath. This practice was a revelation. I became aware of all the games I played in my head with counting. My zazen became more peaceful. There have been moments of bliss when there is only breathing, nothing else. This seldom happened when I was counting, and yet counting was such an ingrained habit, I sometimes lapse back. Did I stay too long with counting? No one ever told me I’d done enough, that it was time to move on.

And then, as I’m feeling settled in my new practice – it’s taken me years – I hear Sogyal say – I’m paraphrasing – “Place 25% of your attention on your breath, another 25% on watching your meditation, checking to ensure attention to the breath, and leave the remaining 50% to abide spaciously.”

What a shift for me, but I’m called to try it. What I’ve recognized so far is how much I’ve loved the bliss I experience when 100% (or nearly so) of my attention is on my breath. I notice my craving for those moments of bliss. Sometimes I indulge myself, even if it’s only for a few breaths, allowing myself the bliss, before coming back to Sogyal’s instruction, 25% attention of my breath, 25% attention to the monitoring the practice, and 50% opening to the spaciousness of life. (Of course, the percentages are metaphorical. There’s no way for me to measure my attention).

I may have come across Sogyal at the right moment. He’s picked up on a warning I’ve heard before: Don’t mistake the bliss state for enlightenment. It’s there in Hakuin. Bernie talked about it in so many ways. “If it was all about the bliss” – Bernie called it “the oneness of life” – “drugs not zazen would be the way.”  I’m working with this teaching now.