There is an old story about a young man who wanted to study martial arts. He hears of a true master living somewhere hidden deep in the mountains. The hopeful student begins by asking questions about where the master might be. He then makes his preparations and begins the arduous journey, climbing difficult mountain paths and searching the wild forest. Finally, the young man finds the remote and secluded hut where the master lives all alone.
He begs the old teacher, "Please, master, teach me all you know." The master laughs. "Absolutely not, you have no ability. I can see it by looking at you. Get out!" He kicks him out. The young man spends the night in the woods and returns the next day. "Please, please let me study with you," he begs. "Out!" Another night in the woods. The third day the young man returns again. "I'll do anything, please let me study with you."
"Well, since you are so persistent and underfoot anyway, you may come in and clean yourself up. Then draw some water and sweep up around the place." The young man is cold, tired, and quite hungry by then. He'll do anything. He starts working earnestly, chopping wood, building a fire, drawing water from the well, making tea, cooking gruel. He works at these chores for a year. However, as time goes on, he becomes annoyed. "I'm not learning any martial arts. I'm wasting my time here. This teacher is a fraud!" Finally he explodes at the old man, "I asked you to teach me and you agreed. When does the training begin?"
The master says mildly, "Oh, that's what you want," and suddenly turns and hits him with a piece of wood. The young man yells, "Ouch! What was that for?" The old man hits him again in the back. The student runs away into the woods, afraid for his life, the master after him in a fury. But then the master goes back and settles into the house as though nothing happened. The student creeps back later and begins to do the chores again, always trying to keep the old man in sight. But somehow, every day, many times a day, the master manages to sneak up on him and strike him from behind. The student never knows when he is going to be hit, from what side, or at what time. Constantly he has to be aware. Even in the middle of the night he might be hit. This goes on for a year. He is black and blue and he's a nervous wreck.
But little by little his senses become keener. He detects little noises, small shadows that are not exactly where they should be, moving the wrong way. Soon he is able to duck out of the way before he is hit. Finally, one day he whirls around and grabs the stick out of the descending hand and strikes the old man. The master bows to him.
How does this story apply to us? This story is about our experience with practice. We do this practice because we want to learn something. What do we want? In Zen we say we want to be awakened, to be enlightened. Thus we find a teacher and plead, "teach me how to be clear, that is what I want." We put aside things in our life to come to sesshin to learn how to be enlightened. [or: to become enlightened?] Actually, we are pleading to the Truth within us: "please emerge. I will do anything to be able to experience you." Be careful. The Truth may answer and tell you what "anything" is.
We come to sesshin and the teacher asks us to do things such as pay attention to our tongue, or count our breath and watch where our mind strays away. We may do chores such as chopping vegetables, or walking absurdly with our bowls from the dining room to the zendo, back and forth. The question arises, when does my training begin? When do I make progress toward enlightenment? This is exactly the same question the young man asks in the story.
What point becomes the source of our training? [or: source of inspiration? the thing that makes us stick with it even though it doesn't make any sense?] What is it that sneaks up on us and strikes a blow? The blows only appear to come from the outside, what catches us unaware is on the inside. Whap! Anger arises, or fear or panic. Whap! We're bewildered. Where did that come from? What is going on? Many of us think that when we start meditation it will be blissful and loving. Here we are sitting on a cushion and something hits us, perhaps it is boredom, or irritation at the person across the hall that we don't even know. Maybe we don't like the way someone sighs or coughs. Perhaps we are counting our breath and simultaneously planning the perfect garden, or what to say to that jerk at work. What is going on? Things are out of control!
What hits us on the cushion is also what hits us over and over again in life. If we don't take care of these things on the cushion then definitely we will be struck again and again in life until we pay attention. Here on the cushion we create a little space around what is going on to watch it more closely. Whap! Depression arises, sadness. Wham! A headache, or a sense of spinning, or sinking. Bop! A sudden panic, I've got to get out of here, I can't take it one more minute. When these things arise and strike us in the quiet of the meditation hall, when there is no real provocation, we begin to realize that the cause of their arising is not external.
We begin to see that we are ignorant of the most fundamental mechanics of how our mind works. We become curious to discover how it does work. If we are struck too painfully or too often, such as through a divorce, losing another job, hurting another friend, we become as desperate as the young man in the story.
The most ardent practitioners are those who have felt the whip of suffering through to the bone, or those who have been hit so often or so "unfairly" that they are desperate to figure it all out. They see the consequences of ignorance. It is ignorance to think these things are happening to us. They are happening within us and because of us. As Pogo said, "we have met the enemy and he is us."
We discover that when we are ignorant of ourselves, we are able to harm others and ourselves. We discover that whenever our sense of "who I am and how things should be to make me safe" is threatened, we lash out. We may lash out with hurtful and cutting words. We use our fists, punching someone. If there happens to be a gun at hand, we may grab it and shoot someone. Whatever weapon is at hand, whatever weapon our life circumstances have taught us to use, we will use in a flash. Some weapons are obvious, some are subtler. We can give someone the cold shoulder, or simply put others down behind their back, even without words, just by rolling our eyes. I can retreat into injured silence leaving my partner to wonder what he has done wrong, and then how he can get me back. I can retreat into a fantasy. If I happen to be driving a car, or if I'm operating shop equipment, or medical equipment, or if I'm inattentive with fire, trying to escape from what is really here, momentary inattention could kill me or someone else.
All of these things are the master creeping up on us, sometimes tapping us, sometimes striking a hard blow. If we don't pay attention we are hit hard. If we ignore the faint footsteps or the moving shadows, Whap!
What do we do? We have to do exactly what the apprentice did, we have to learn to be alert to the subtle signs of the approach of greed, anger, and ignorance.
With anger, we need to be alert to the feeling in the pit of the stomach, or the tightening in the chest or the jaw. The heart beating faster, the feeling of adrenaline rising. The mind returning to old injuries, old hurts, rehearsing that feeling of anger, injustice, and indignation.
For greed, the small warning could be feelings of loneliness, emptiness, and the desire to fill that hole with something. Food, a relationship, or a new anything. Another alert to the approach of greed is the mind moving forward into the future, trying to plan it all exactly as we would wish it. That's ignorance, too, of course. Ignoring the present moment, and ignoring the energy wasted in planning the many futures that will never be. We also learn to detect the subtle signs of the approach of ignorance. There is the lure of not being fully present in the total uncertainty of each new moment or with the sadness of the pain of this very moment. Or even with the joy. We may be afraid of joy because it will disappear.
At first we catch the blow too late, after we are hit by a full-blown upset. As our minds quiet we begin to catch it a little earlier, and we can watch its approach. We can cut it off mid-fantasy, mid-emotional reaction, simply stop the thoughts that feed it and return to the present moment. Then we begin to catch it at the first moment of the lure to move away from present moment. We have a little more control over it. Eventually we obtain the ability to turn and face it, grab it and strike it back. We must develop the skill to seize the weapon and turn it on itself. That skill comes from years of practice and knowing oneself thoroughly.
How do we turn the weapon around? Anger has the ability to mobilize us, to get us out of a dangerous situation. Our ignorance itself is dangerous. It will cause us to repeat our suffering and to hurt others, generation after generation, unless we do something to stop it. We can use the energy of anger to look anger full in its face, to hold it back from becoming angry words or actions, and then to do the hard practice necessary to dig down to its source and root it out.
We recognize greed as the desire to fill the emptiness inside. We turn that greed into a fervent vow to become awakened, for all beings to become awakened. Our greed for enlightenment can overcome our fear of doing the work we must do, to turn and look that emptiness full in its face, to know our true Emptiness. Only then can we know the Fullness that emerges continually from it, thus to end our fear and loneliness forever.
We recognize ignorance as the desire not to see the continual harm we do when we do not know who we are. We see it as the desire not to acknowledge the lifetimes of hard work that must be done to fully eradicate that false sense of self that is at the heart of the harming. We have to turn to face that ignorance and transform it into the ability to approach each unknown moment with still mind and open heart. We have to drop all our history and be born again into that Great Unborn, new each moment, wide-eyed as infants, continually acknowledging our terrifying and wonderful dependence on all other beings.
Torei Zenji says:
"Our Zen school us based upon the faith that all sentient beings originally have the Buddha nature, and so we believe that we ordinary beings too are fully endowed with the True Nature of all the Buddhas, and thus with the wisdom of all the Buddhas. This is the first article of our faith.
Secondly, we believe that by having faith in this and by practicing it, all those entering the training with their feet on solid ground will surely attain the Way of the Buddha, regardless of whether their root energy (capability) be great or small, sharp or dull; all will attain their heart's longing."
This is the work we must do, the commitment we must make. We are willing to do it because we want to end suffering and we believe in the Path that makes this possible. All of us contain the Pure Bright Nature. The work we are doing is not to create it, but to dispel our ignorance so that we experience and manifest it more and more fully. If we follow the Path diligently, all of us, without exception, will attain this, our heart's deepest longing.
