Essen­tial Zen Lessons

I made it! I’ve arrived! I’m the best!â€

I came close to dig­ging in to the June 2008 cover story of Psy­chol­ogy Today - “Dare To Be Your­self.†The prob­lem, as I read the arti­cle, is that it is decid­edly results ori­ented, as some­thing from a West­ern per­spec­tive would be. While it describes liv­ing with flex­i­bil­ity and flow,

it’s clear that such an approach is seen as a tech­nique to get some­where — to being authen­tic, (What­ever the hell that means…)

Well, gag me with a spoon.

“I want to be authen­tic, real, who I really am,†is often short-hand for, “I want to con­tinue to do stu­pid stuff that doesn’t work, and get oth­ers to behave, so that I can be happy.â€

Because they believe that the solu­tion to their prob­lems lies out­side of them, they are frus­trated and angry — and can’t quite place their fin­ger on why.

It’s why so many peo­ple are so sappy when they “fall in love.†There’s all this emo­tional vibra­tion going on, and it’s all so greatly dis­tract­ing from the under­ly­ing dissatisfaction.

Zen is all about “is-ness.â€

In other words, what is going on inside of you — all of the mess, and game play­ing, blam­ing and drama, — IS your life. As is what­ever your body is doing, moment by moment. To again quote the amaz­ing Taoist, Stew­art Wilde, “The way it is, is the way it is.â€

There is no get­ting past who we are, thereby achiev­ing some state of bliss where every­thing is, well, “just per­fect!†Per­fect is just one more goal — one more “judg­ment point.â€

Despite the pre­vail­ing west­ern myth that the goal of life is hap­pi­ness, in Zen, we might sug­gest that being present is all that is pos­si­ble. Or per­haps bet­ter put, aware­ness of being present — it’s not that being present is a choice, after all.

Here’s the first three Essen­tial Zen Lessons.

1 — Be Present

If pres­ence is all there is, why is it so hard to be so? Well, let me re-introduce you to your egoic mind structure.

For me, the odd part about the Psy­chol­ogy Today arti­cle is that the writer is caught in the “authen­tic self loop.†This is the idea that peo­ple are actu­ally both real and “sub­stan­tial.†Our minds do this to us by con­struct­ing sto­ries of past and pro­jec­tions of future.

Exist­ing in the land of giants…

Here is a “pic­ture of me, age 8 or there­abouts.†Who is this per­son? Does he exist? Where? If you say, “That is you then, and you are now who you are now,†there is no way to prove that. You’d say, “Yeah, but genet­i­cally you are the same.†No way to prove that. Even if you had a genetic sam­ple from “then,†there’s no way to prove it came from “me, then.â€

None, not one, of my cells is the same as his.

In other words, the pic­ture cap­tures a frame in a movie.
He existed like that in that moment,

and never before or since.

If I think I am actu­ally him, then I begin to con­coct sto­ries about him, back then. I actu­ally have no clue about what this pic­ture is. I rec­og­nize the chick to my right, and she seems to be col­lect­ing the offer­ing at school, which makes no sense. So, I’d have to invent a story.

Which is what you do, every time you describe yourself.

Pres­ence is bring­ing your atten­tion, con­tin­u­ally, to the frame of the movie that is “now.†In this sense, it would be Zen-ish to say that we are processes as opposed to fixed real­i­ties. In each moment, with each breath, we come and go, are born, and die, and are born again. Hard con­cept, since all those mem­o­ries and sto­ries seem real.

A cou­ple the other day assured me that they would always be “in romance†with each other. They imag­ined that they had been “in love / romance†for 8 months, after all. Since they were pre­tend­ing they could pre­dict the future, I invited them to remem­ber the begin­ning of other rela­tion­ships, when they had felt the same about past lovers. They briefly looked sheep­ish, then spoke in uni­son, “This time, it’s dif­fer­ent!†(Of course, they are right, but for another resa­son entirely!)

Des­per­a­tion here, folks. I feel good right now, and I want this to last for­ever, while get­ting “bet­ter and bet­ter.†Yet, there is no for­ever. There is just this moment, and my choice of how I will be in it. To think of the future is per­verse, as it actu­ally takes me away from this moment, and “here, now†is al there ever is.

2 — Drop Clinging

Sure, I’m speak­ing improb­a­bil­i­ties. It’s not pos­si­ble to never cling. (Dou­ble neg­a­tive! Wow!) We can notice and let go, however.

Cling­ing is actu­ally 3-fold. We pull what we want toward us, we push away what we hate, and we are neu­tral to much of our expe­ri­ence. Oddly, all of this is done in our heads

Want­ing more is the state of men­tally grasp­ing onto some­thing plea­sur­able as opposed to expe­ri­enc­ing the now.

Push­ing away is men­tally cre­at­ing abhor­rent sto­ries, as opposed to expe­ri­enc­ing the now.

Being dis-interested is escap­ing into, you guessed it, your head, where you judge that your fan­tasies are “bet­ter†than expe­ri­enc­ing the now.

Cling­ing is all about think­ing that your thoughts about liv­ing are bet­ter than actu­ally doing liv­ing. Cling­ing is thus a judge­ment — a men­tal eval­u­a­tion of some­thing past — a set­ting up of sce­nar­ios that are then com­pared with the now.

And the now is found to be lacking!

All fight­ing is caused by this. I have a thought about how you should be, I judge that you are not as I want you to be, and there­fore, if you love me, I decide that you should want to fix your­self so I can have my fan­tasies match real­ity.

In other words, I judge that how I imag­ine you should be is more impor­tant than how you are.

Yet, when some­one wants you to match their belief of how you should be, you get all bent. Weird, eh?

Engage­ment in the here and now is sim­ple presence.

This, then this, then this. No thought of “all of this should be dif­fer­ent.†That’s cling­ing to a thought. Instead, do some­thing dif­fer­ent, do what you are doing, or leave. Way too sim­ple, eh? After all, you are here to tell every­one else what to do, right?

Get over it.

3 — Simplify

We cre­ate com­plex­ity to build a sense of impor­tance and drama. I see this with clients all the time. They report some event, and they blow it up to such “large­ness†I’m sur­prised the thought doesn’t explode. They’ve put hours and hours (some­times years and years) into the story, and there are twists and turns and pauses and tears and lots of drama.

I used to do this a lot. I’d go off to my ther­a­pist, Glo­ria, and tell her one of mine. She’d lis­ten, shake her head, and say,

“Cute, but stupid.â€

I’d shake my head and let go of the story.

I’m not smart. I’m just good at drop­ping my drama. I see me hurt­ing myself and decide, for this moment, not to.

Ram Dass used to talk about “Nobody Spe­cial train­ing.†Same thing. We want to be sig­nif­i­cant, noticed, impor­tant. We’re not. No one is.

Story sim­pli­fi­ca­tion is this: “This is it. How it is right now is how it is, and in the next moment it will be that. Me too.â€

This does not pre­clude action. It’s like me and Glo­ria. Her action is to point out my inat­ten­tive story mak­ing, and to invite me back to the present. It’s a short, sweet approach to ther­apy and life. If she chose to engage in debate about my sto­ries, she’d join me in mag­ni­fy­ing them.

Sim­pli­fi­ca­tion extends to all of our actions. It’s the mean­ing of “Chop Wood, Carry Water.†When chop­ping, chop. When writ­ing, write. When work­ing, work. Let go of the need to bore your­self or dis­tract your­self. Do what the present moment requires.

More next week!