Crossing Nebraska

I think it’s safe to say that, for any given individual, Zen practice is an ever-changing dynamic. During my tenure helping out with the instruction of beginners, it was quite common to find people hoping to gain something, whether it be refuge, meaning, knowledge, enlightenment, peace of mind, community, an escape from the chaos of modernity, or a means to cope with pain, grief, anxiety, depression and substance abuse. And how could I possibly claim exemption from a good number of those! As practice progresses, however, (toward what?) one begins to realize change. But what exactly has changed? If anything, what is gained via Zen practice amounts to addition by subtraction – a dropping off of ideas, concepts, beliefs, expectations, unnecessary stuff and unnecessary activity. But what happens when we begin to drop off huge chunks of what we once thought Zen practice was all about? In another century I might have been one of those monks who headed off into the mountains to live...

Some years ago I had the good fortune to stumble upon a weeklong meditation retreat in the wooded Uplands of Indiana led by a teacher whom I’d never heard of before. With the exception of its duration and the fact that it was in a natural setting and in the Soto Zen tradition, I had no idea what to expect. My job, simply enough, was to show up and remain open to experience. Anyway, after arriving and taking one look at the schedule posted on the door of that little rustic cabin turned zendo – the fourteen daily periods of seated meditation (zazen) separated by brief periods of walking meditation (kinhin) – the first experience that I opened up to was that of fear! Fourteen fifty minute periods of zazen each day! Could I physically take it? Could I mentally take it? I didn’t know!       The schedule struck me as dauntingly unrelenting – nothing but zazen and kinhin interspersed with just enough time to eat and sleep and attend to the barest of personal hygien...

“Well, this will just make room in your life for someone better to come along.” Those words closed around my heart like a fist. Better? Better than the woman I love? Better than my wife? Yes, I felt deeply hurt, and, yes, I felt more incredibly betrayed than I think I could possibly feel, but a love that’s real is not blown away by such winds of circumstance, is it? What did “better” even mean, anyway? Do we have some mental checklist of criteria, both conscious and unconscious, the satisfactory completion of which signifies love – with more checked boxes corresponding to a “better” love, and “best” corresponding to some theoretically perfect love in which all possible criteria are checked? If that were so then love would merely reside in the mundane realm of convenient transactions: I love you as long as your actions please me. I love you as long as you give me what I desire. I love you as long as you continue to fulfill my needs. If that is the true nature of love, I pondered, then...

Zen student to teacher: "I come seeking liberation." Zen teacher to student: "Who has enslaved you? Show me your chains!" + I’d departed from Shoshoni that morning with 100 miles of ‘rattlesnake country’ to ride through before arriving in Casper, Wyoming – my evening destination. I pedaled slowly, knowing full well that the afternoon would bring the hottest weather that I’d ridden in all year, and my longest ride in many, many a year. And on top of all of that I was tired. I was tired before I’d even begun, still recovering as I was from the sinus infection that had laid me low back in the Tetons, and the long ride from Cody to Thermopolis and then up through the Wind River Canyon – back in time and smack dab into the center of a raging thunderstorm. (See  Desire, Aspiration, and Doing What We Can .) But none of that was of any consequence anymore, for there was nothing left to do but ride. Now, it might seem as though having nothing left to do would epit...