Round and Round the Mountain

Roshi Bernie Glassman taught us to go up and down the mountain at the same time. Going up the mountain refers to our efforts to realize the oneness of life. We go up the mountain seeking enlightenment. We come down the mountain to help others.

There are a lot of Zen people who don’t agree with Bernie. They argue that if we try to help others before achieving enlightenment, we will do more harm than good. Perhaps they’re embracing the Buddha’s first Pure Precept, ordinarily translated as “Cease from Evil.” I prefer, “Do no harm,” the same sentiment as the Hippocratic Oath.

I spent a lot of years doing social work and psychotherapy, most of those years before I met Bernie, mostly without a clue to the oneness of life. The separation between patients and therapists was ever present. The image I trained in – the patient is in a sinking boat; if the therapist jumps on board, both will drown – says it well. It was years of Zen practice before I experienced the oneness. I look back with some regret on my years of separation. I could have done better. I could have been more helpful, but I am also reminding myself that as deluded as I was, I still did help a lot of people ease their suffering.

Bernie used to argue that none of us would ever likely be fully enlightened. Sometimes he made an exception for the Dalai Lama who, as an incarnation of Avalokiteshvara Bodhisattva, had a leg up on the rest of us. If we wait until our work on our own enlightenment is complete, we’ll never get around to helping anyone else. There is, after all, more than one Pure Precept. There’s also “doing good for others.” When would we get around to that?

There’s another argument too. As long as we remain focused on ourselves, ignoring the needs of others, all we end up doing is adding energy to our egotism. All our self-focused efforts move us further from the experience of the oneness of life, further and further from enlightenment.