Practicing Zazen

We are told as beginning Zen students to notice our thoughts and let them go. As a beginning Zen teacher, I repeated that instruction. It took me a while to recognize and acknowledge what an advanced step that was. The first instruction – and I love this step – is much more basic: Sit still and shut up. It’s amazing how difficult that step can be. It was for me.  

My first challenge was to manage to sit still for 30 minutes. I wanted to sit with the folks at the Soho Zendo. “Come back, when you can sit still for 30 minutes.” At that point, I was only sitting for 20 minutes. Thirty minutes was a stretch. The Sage of the I Ching got me over that hump. I asked him for advice, and he told me to stop judging each sitting. I’d been very proud of my ruthless self-evaluation. “Stop judging.” It took me the whole summer anyway, but when I stopped grading each period of zazen – I was actually including my assessment of each morning’s sit in my journal – sitting still became easier. I was able to join the Soho Zendo in September.

When I took the big leap into a sesshin that December, sitting still and shutting up was my practice. I was light years from “letting my thoughts go.”  I did that sesshin by thinking. I sat in silence and recalled the names of the players on my sports teams growing up, the Brooklyn Dodgers – I can still do it: Jackie Robinson, Pee Wee Reese, Carl Furillo, Roy Campanella, Gil Hodges, Duke Snider, Billy Cox, Preacher Roe, Don Newcombe, Andy Pafko – and the hated Yankees and the rival Giants. The Knicks and the Rangers and the Football Giants have faded a bit but, thirty years ago, at my first sesshin with Kyudo Roshi, I was able to bring them back. I survived the sesshin. It was an exhilarating experience. Many students find it wonderfully supportive when we acknowledge the difficulty of that first step.

It was sometime after that that I finally got to noticing the thoughts and letting them go. Now as I teach, that’s the second step: Shut up and listen. It is the form I’ve given that instruction. There is no space in your practice for the voice of God – call him or her what you will -- if you don’t shut up and listen. Make space. Stop talking. Stop the interior chatter. Notice the thoughts as they arise and let them go. You’re not going to be able to hear what God is saying if you don’t stop going on and on about Pee Wee and Jackie and the Duke. I love Daido Roshi’s scuba-diving metaphor, and I use it all the time. Sitting on the bottom, watch the bubbles rise. Sitting on your cushion, watch the thoughts bubble off.

Telling yourself or someone else to “shut up and listen” doesn’t solve the problem, “poof,” just like that. Of course, there’s still the idle chatter of distraction, the “to-do list,” stuff like that. Notice the thoughts, notice them gently, and let them go. When you allow this space to widen, there can be a wonderful feeling of peace, calm, a “bright, bright, bright sunshiny day.” The feeling of spaciousness can become intoxicating. For some, that intoxication is the point of practice, just to sit there enjoying the glow. 

Not for me. The space allows something new to happen. What happens when you shut up and listen? You allow yourself to hear the “voice of God.” Call it whatever you like. My parents were atheists. I like to call it the voice of God. You feel something arising, something you didn’t expect, very often something that you didn’t want to hear. Do you treat “the voice of God” as chatter and send it bubbling off? Some would say so. I don’t think so. 

Jishu Roshi always told me, “Go deeper.” When I let go of the chatter, what arises takes me deeper, often someplace that scares me. It connects me to deeper fears. Sometimes these fears appear as demons. The temptation is to push our demons away. My practice now is to welcome them. That’s my third and at this point my final zazen instruction: Embrace your demons; befriend your demons.

It took me a while to grok this. I went through a patch, when enamored of The Secret, I doubled down on pushing away negative thoughts. Think positive. And the positive will happen. Think negative, and the negative will happen. I would describe that now as keeping the “demons” in their closets and cellars. Maybe I learned this from Freud, but I didn’t immediately connect it to my zazen practice. Freud was just playing a different language game than the Buddha. Locking up your demons is the cause of suffering, whether as individuals we’re suppressing our fears or collectively sending them to gulags or concentration camps or mental hospitals.

It seems to me these days that this work with my demons is an endless practice. Recently, on my cushion, my demon of mortality appeared. Surprise, surprise. Two weeks ago, I had my second angioplasty and got two more stents. The surgery went well. There were no complications this time. Seeing Dr. Gala today for my follow-up visit, the demon is worried. “He’s going to tell you you need a pacemaker or a by-pass.” My first thought is to tell the demon to shut up, to bubble off. I’m fine. I won’t have to worry about another surgery for a while. 

But that is not my Zen practice these days. I want to welcome my demons. “Come sit by me on the cushion.”  My demon is not a crazy, awful monster, although at first he looked that way. He is only reminding me that my body is a fragile, impermanent vessel. Appreciate it. Take care of it. Enjoy walking it in the lovely Staten Island parks. 

Who are my heroes now? Who awes me? It’s not the super athlete who zooms by on the boardwalk. As I’m learning to appreciate my slow pace, I’m awed by the guys who are out there on the boardwalk with their canes, with their walkers, the guys who are getting out there every day pushing their shopping carts to steady themselves. I wonder if I will have the courage for that.

Why practice? We sit, we empty ourselves in order to open to what is happening right here, right now. The goal of practice is not to be empty. My intention is not to become an empty teacup sitting idly on the shelf. We empty our teacup so that there is room for a fresh cup of tea.

When I make room for my demon this morning, when I don’t push him away, my appreciation of this moment deepens. I looked forward to an hour on the boardwalk after my cardiologist visit with whatever is. This time, the news was all good. What will happen in the future? Will I eventually need a pacemaker? Don’t know.