Everyday Zen

The crux of (Everyday) Zen?

“The intensity and ability to be right-here-now.”

Moment to moment to moment.

We have, as we always talk about and Joko reminds us, the CHOICE.

There’s “a fork in the road: we can go this way, we can go that way. It’s always a choice, moment by moment, between our nice world that we want set up in our heads and what really is.”

So… How’s YOUR relationship with reality?

Are you loving what is?

Let’s remember the power of loving our fate and using any and everything that’s given to us as fuel for our growth.

Right-here-now.

Today.

That’s from a chapter on Joko’s lecture called “True Suffering and False Suffering.”

Lots of things come to mind here.

First, I think it’s always (!) wise to come back to Kristen Neff’s brilliant equation from Self-Compassion that: Suffering = Pain x Resistance.

Our Suffering will be multiplied by our Resistance. If we can’t be right-here-now with what is? Well… Get ready to have your Suffering amplified.

I also think of Genpo Roshi’s wisdom from Big Mind, Big Heart where he tells us: “What we do naturally is we cling, we grasp, we hold on to. We are not functioning freely, not free, because we’re stuck. Buddha observed this tendency and gave it a name. He said when the mind is stuck, you’re in dukkha (usually translated from the Sanskrit as suffering). Dukkha literally means a wheel whose hub doesn’t move. So what kind of a wheel do you have? A useless, dysfunctional wheel. What good is a wheel if it doesn’t move?

What Buddha discovered and taught was to free up the wheel. He called it sukkha, a liberated wheel, a freed-up wheel. That means liberation, nirvana.”

That’s worth a reread and a reflection.

The literal etymological root of the Sanskrit word we translate as “suffering”? It means “a wheel whose hub doesn’t move.”

It’s STUCK. It can’t flow with what life is presenting right-here-now.

That STUCKNESS (aka Resistance) is what amplifies the Suffering.

The key? One more time. Flow with what is. Right-here-now.

P.S. Byron Katie comes to mind as well. Of course, as we’ve discussed many (!) times, she tells us it’s all about Loving What Is.

Remember: “The only time we suffer is when we believe a thought that argues with what is. When the mind is perfectly clear, what is is what we want.”

One more time… (Notice a theme here? ;) … Want to suffer?

Joko and other wise Zen teachers would say: Let there be “a tenth of an inch of difference” between reality and your acceptance of that reality.

It’s funny because when I read the name “Joko” I immediately thought of Jocko Willink. He’s the Navy SEAL equivalent of a Zen master. (And Stoic master and…)

One of his core practices for embracing reality? He refuses to give a tenth of an inch to reality when he says “Good” to ANY and EVERYthing that ever happens in his life.

“Good.” “Good.” “Good.”

The legendary basketball coach (and Zen Master) Phil Jackson talks about this idea in his book Sacred Hoops (still need to do a Note on that one!) where he tells us: “In Zen it is said that the gap between accepting things the way they are and wishing them to be otherwise is ‘the tenth of an inch of difference between heaven and hell.’ If we can accept whatever we’ve been dealt—no matter how unwelcome—the way to proceed eventually becomes clear. This is what is meant by right action: the capacity to observe what’s happening and act appropriately, without being distracted by self-centered thoughts. If we rage and resist, our angry, fearful minds have trouble quieting down sufficiently to allow us to act in the most beneficial way for ourselves and others.”

Back to Joko.

She tells us: “If we require that life be a certain way, inevitably we suffer—since life is always the way it is, and not always fair, not always pleasant. Life is not particularly the way we want it to be, it is just the way it is. And that need not prevent our enjoyment of it, our appreciation, our gratitude.”

Here’s to loving what is.

Closing that one-tenth of an inch of difference between heaven and hell.

Right-here-now.

Today.

That’s from a chapter called “From Problems to Decisions.”

When I read it I *immediately* thought of the brilliant wisdom from one of the greatest martial artists of our era: Georges St-Pierre. In his book on The Way of the Fight he makes a distinction between “sacrifices” and “decisions” as he tells us: “The key has always been simple, though: discovery. Even though other people had started voicing their opinions on my potential, I remained silent. Until I discovered exactly what it is that I wanted to do: become a mixed martial artist. That discovery gave belief to my inner dreams because I started seeing the concrete possibility that I could become a fighter, a true fighter. And so the change was going from having visions about my life to living them concretely.

At this stage in my life I left many, many things behind. I constantly heard Kristof’s words whispered in my ear, and it triggered a reaction inside me and I realized: this is what I want to do. I want to become champion of the world in mixed martial arts.

And then, all of my energy, everything I had inside of me, went toward achieving that goal. I wasn’t making sacrifices anymore, I was making decisions. Train instead of party. Work instead of play. Perfect practice instead of casual repetition.

I started living life with purpose and direction. In the words of Buddha, ‘First, intention; then, enlightenment.’”

Back to Joko.

She tells us: “For instance, suppose we said to Mother Teresa, ‘Well, Mother Teresa, you might consider living in San Francisco rather than Calcutta; the night life is better. You would have nicer places to go out to dinner. The climate’s easier.’ But how does she make her decision? How did she make her decision to stay in the hellish part of Calcutta where she works? Where did that decision come from? ‘As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he.’ She would probably call it prayer: from her years of being with herself, she sees where she works or what she does not as a problem, but just a decision.

The more we know who we are, the more our problems shift into, ‘I am this therefore I will do that, or I am to some degree willing to do that.’ And we will sometimes choose things that look to other people very trying, very unpleasant. ‘What do you mean, you’re going to do that? I wouldn’t do that.’ But if for me in my heart that’s what I feel I am and the way my life wants to express itself, then there is no problem.”

Begs the question: How do YOU make YOUR decisions?

With more clarity, most of our “problems’ might just evaporate into a life of purpose.

Impermanence.

It’s just another name for perfection.

I’m reminded of the Pali word for impermanence. More specifically, I’m reminded of the beautiful way S.N. Goenka says the word.

If you’ve done one of his silent Vipassana meditation retreats, this word has also been tattooed on your consciousness: Anicca. (Pronounced: “uh-knee-chuh.”)

Anicca. Anicca. Anicca.

Wisdom from another Zen master comes to mind. In No Mud, No Lotus, Thich Nhat Hanh tells us: “There are cells inside your body that are dying as you read these words. Fifty to seventy billion cells die each day in the average human adult. You are too busy to organize funerals for all of them! At the very same time, new cells are being born, and you don’t have the time to sing Happy Birthday to them. If old cells don’t die, there’s no chance for new cells to be born. So death is a very good thing. It’s very crucial for birth. You are undergoing birth and death at this very moment.”

Let’s remember: Impermanence? It’s just another name for perfection. Anicca. Anicca. Anicca.

That’s from a bonus interview Joko did with Tricycle magazine in 1998.

Joko does a great job of making the point that having “breakthroughs” on the meditation mat ISN’T the point.

The point is learning how “to be as awake as possible in each moment.”

Which is why she, like so many other wise teachers for millennia, have encouraged us to use our daily life as our practice.

We talked about Genpo Roshi earlier. He echoes this wisdom as well when he tells us: “We’re at the point in our evolution that we all have to become conscious. This is a time of revolution. There’s no holding back. So I’m about tearing down the monastery walls and seeing the whole world as the monastery, as the practice, as the spiritual temple. What we’re all working on is this very being, this very life. This is the temple, it has no walls.”

In the introduction, I mentioned the fact that Joko and George Leonard both started their paths to mastery relatively late in their lives. Leonard echoed the same theme in his work.

In Mastery, he tells us: “Could all of us reclaim lost hours of our lives by making everything—the commonplace along with the extraordinary—a part of our practice?”

Answer: Yes.

Idea: Let’s get off our cushions and make every moment our practice… TODAY! :)