Practice

Both of my daughters are learning string instruments.  The older is very disciplined, practices almost every day, pushes herself with new challenges.  You can see the steady pace of her progress, and hear the beauty of her music.  The younger is more temperamental, and gets caught up in the suffering that comes with the difficulty of learning new things.  Two sides, and in both I see myself.  On the way to the Zendo early this morning, I was tired and grumbling about my small suffering with this commitment to sit every day.  So early, it seemed particularly burdensome.  Suddenly, I was thinking about my younger daughter who seems to struggle and suffer with with musical practice, but does practice almost every day, growing steadily. Her struggle and perseverance spurred me on.  Practice....and practice.  Gumble...sit on the zafu....MU!

Walking Without Seeing The Way

"If you do not see the way,
you do not see it even as you walk on it.
When you walk the way, it is not near, it is not far."

The Harmony of the Relative and Absolute (Sandokai)

It is fortunate that even when we do not see it, we walk the Way.   What can this mean?  We are not separate from the Great Way, even when we stop sitting for a time, and cannot see it.  Why then must we sit zazen?   It is not only to walk the Way, but to know that we walk on it.  Watching my children live their lives, I often see them express great mastery of some skill, or great insight, and not see it themselves.  On one hand, this is what zazen is about, returning to that state of simple, unaffected expression of a child.  Yet we are loaded down with concepts, grasping, aversion, and thoughts that obscure this sight and taint our actions.  As said by the Ancient Masters, going beyond this by zazen means that we eat when hungry and drink when thirsty, and now  know our intent and actions, simply and for what they are.  The vision of years and unencumbered action of a child.

Birth and Death

In my work, many times I see birth and death bracketing the day. In the mornings, walking by the newborn nursery, there is birth. In the afternoon, walking in the intensive care unit, there is death. What is this birth, this death? Standing by the bedside of the dying, I do not know. Standing by the window of the nursrey, I do not know. Sitting zazen, only this!

An Executioner Suffers

During the reign of the Khmer Rouge in Vietnam, millions were tortured and killed. In a profoundly moving editorial in the New York Times today, "My Savior, Their Killer", Francios Bizot, describes meeting his Khmer Rouge torturer decades later while he is tried for war crimes. While Bizot was freed, over ten thousand others were tortured and killed under the supervision of Kaing Guek Eav. In this essay, he describes how Kaing Guek Eav broke down when he revisited a site where over 30 years ago he inflected death and torture on thousands. I leave you with this haunting description to meditate on the nature of suffering, the poison karma of inflicting suffering on others, and what it means to forgive. Here, the former executioner speaks, as told by Bizot:

“I ask for your forgiveness — I know that you cannot forgive me, but I ask you to leave me the hope that you might,” he said before collapsing in tears on the shoulder of one of his guards.

I was not there — it was a closed hearing — but those who were reported that the cry of the former executioner betrayed such suffering that one of the few survivors of Tuol Sleng screamed out, “Here are the words that I’ve longed to hear for 30 years!”

It could be that forgiveness is possible after a simple, natural process, when the victim feels that he has been repaid. And the executioner has to pay dearly, for it is the proof of his suffering that eases ours.

...We shall all be at the trial — not just as judges, but also as victims, and the accused...

The genocide of the Khmer Rouge will be judged as a “crime against humanity,” a crime against ourselves. As such, Duch’s guilt exceeds his immediate victims; it becomes the guilt of humanity, in the name of all victims. Duch killed mankind. The trial of the Khmer Rouge should be an opportunity for each of us to gaze at the torturer with some distance — from beyond the intolerable cry of the suffering, which may veil the truth of the abomination. The only way to look at the torturer is to humanize him.

Excerpted from "My Savior, Their Killer", Francios Bizot, New York Times, February 17, 2009

Where is Monkey Mind? or Zazen Changes Your Brain

I stumbled across this interesting article the other day examining the effect of regular zazen on the brain using high-tech MRI imaging in the journal PLoS One. Functional MRI is a type of imaging of the brain that can show both an picture of the brain structure (like the one above), and the areas of the brain that are being used more than others at a particular moment. It turns out that such studies show the physical locations of monkey mind! Monkey mind, that stream of thoughts that rattles through the mind unbidden, is described by neuroscientists as:

"...brain regions that are metabolically active during wakeful rest and consistently deactivate in a variety the performance of demanding tasks. This “default network” has been functionally linked to the stream of thoughts occurring automatically in the absence of goal-directed activity..."

When the scientists compared activity in the brains of long-term zazen practitioners (3 years or more of daily meditation), the findings were quite interesting. Both zazen practitioners and a control group (non-meditators) were shown visual pictures of words, as well as non-sense combinations of letters. When zazen practitioners saw words, they still had signs of the brain activity of monkey mind, it was shut off very quickly; non-meditators had the long, ongoing brain reverberations that we are all familiar with. So, neuroscience tells us again what our teachers have for centuries: you can never completely rid yourself of monkey mind, but you can settle the mind into stillness with training.

Go sit, change your brain!