Shut Up and Listen

I worry that Zen in America is getting very rigid, very mechanical. Reading Merton’s introduction to his Zhuang Zhou book, I was wowed to discover that the great Tao master was facing a similar challenge 2500 years ago. Once the goal of practice has hardened into an external object, the next thing you know, the pathway instructions have been objectified as well.

Meditation instruction, “Beginners’ Instruction,” hasn’t been around that long, fifty years or so, invented apparently by Yasutani as he worked with lay practitioners. Until then, students entering a Zen monastery learned what to do by observing the senior students. Yasutani’s way is everywhere in American Zen, thanks perhaps to Kapleau’s early classic, The Three Pillars of Zen. 

Maezumi Roshi did koan study with Yasutani, and Bernie as Maezumi’s senior student got to study with him too. Yasutani’s footprint is everywhere in our lineage. I trained in beginner’s instruction at Bernie’s Zen Community of New York. I qualified as an “instructor” by giving beginner’s instruction one Saturday morning to the whole sangha, mostly people who’d been sitting years longer than me and including that week Bernie’s successor, Bob Kennedy, who was in attendance. I was terrified but I passed. I’d given instructions correctly. I didn’t question the process. I was familiar with this way of learning to teach. I’d qualified years earlier as a Red Cross Water Safety Instructor by correctly giving swimming instruction.  

“When thoughts arise during zazen, let them go. Return to your breath.” Everyone is taught that. We discover some very peaceful moments when no thoughts seem to arise. For new meditators, this often becomes the goal: sitting without thinking. Bernie laughed. “The brain secrets thoughts the way the pancreas secrets enzymes. When thinking stops, you flatline. You’re dead.”

Over the last fifty years, Yasutani’s instructions became the way. When a student gets stuck, most often the beginners’ instruction is repeated. Again and again. The practice pointers have become objectified. Follow the instructions. If the instructions aren’t working, it’s the student’s fault. Practice harder. Try harder. “You’re not following the instructions.”

How about when the instructions aren’t working for a student, we change up the instructions? I’ve been playing with, “Shut up and listen.” If I shut up and listen, I can hear the voice of the Universe. Sometimes. Not every day, some days. If you want, you can listen for the voice of God. But you have to shut up. God is not going to talk over you, is not likely to interrupt. Shut up and listen.

You probably need to practice this. I certainly did. God, the Universe, whatever your term of reference, wasn’t the only one I wasn’t listening to, still isn’t. I interrupt everyone, get excited, jump in. I don’t have to be on my cushion to work on listening. All day, in every conversation, I have the opportunity to shut up and listen. I don’t need to be brain dead to listen. I just need to stop talking. This way of sitting has changed zazen for me. Give it a try.