The Best Buddhist Writing 2010 - Melvin McLeod [100]
This same thing has happened to me. One experience I had early in my Zen practice still makes me laugh. It was 1980 and I was a student at Zen Mountain Monastery in upstate New York. Taizan Maezumi Roshi was abbot and the resident teacher was the late John Daido Loori. The monastery was relatively new and I was the head of administration as well as a senior student. My job was to keep everything running smoothly and ensure that the monastery flourished. I felt I was doing something noble and perhaps I was; however, I was also becoming righteous, irritable, and intolerant. One day Daido was walking though the monastery office where I was working. He sat down and I unloaded all my troubles and my complaints about the staff: this one was doing that, and that one wasn’t doing this.
Daido asked if I remembered the first line of the verse we chanted each evening—the Four Vows.
“Yes,” I said. “Sentient beings are numberless, I vow to save them.” He said, “That’s right. Now which sentient beings did you have in mind?”
And he chuckled as he watched my face.
Imagine what would happen if we gave up our ideas about how everything should be. What if we could peel away our constructed reality until we come to a place where a tree is just a tree, and not our idea of what a tree should be? “Tree” is just a word. “We’re walking in a field” is just an idea. But the idea of “walking in a field” also has a lot of connotations—it could suggest I won’t be able to walk someday. It could suggest life and death. Our words and ideas can be full of fear. Why don’t we peel those away while we’re at it?
How do we get to “One Mind”? Like Alice, our lives have us bumping into saints and sages who are pointing the way, if only we could see them.
When we engage in practices—sitting and walking meditation, and mindfulness in our daily lives—we gradually create an opening from which to see the events that occur. We add some breathing space—you might call it a hole—a place a white rabbit can pop out of. Practices create possibility. What appeared to be positive or negative experiences with people or events become opportunities for practice and the growth of understanding. We can learn to welcome our experience of our lives.
We often use our fears to maintain the illusion of safety. But that kind of safety closes down our lives. Here’s a tool for getting closer to Wonderland:
Take a few moments to sit and breathe. Notice how often in a day you feel afraid or anxious. It may be helpful to keep a notebook and write down each time you experience this fear.
Each time it comes up, stop, sit, breathe, and notice.
It can be surprising to become aware of one’s fears. It takes awareness and courage to open our eyes and say, “I really don’t know what’s going on. Bring on the awe. Bring on the eternal. Bring on that which I don’t know.” When we are open to the confusion and the craziness, we get little slivers of recognition.
. . . [S]aid the Hatter with a sigh: “it’s always teatime, and we’ve no time to wash the things between whiles.”
“Then you keep moving round, I suppose?” said Alice.
“Exactly so,” said the Hatter, “as the things get used up.”
That’s why there’s no room for Alice at the table. They have a perfect way of looking at things, and it works just as well as Alice’s. It’s always six o’clock; therefore, it’s always teatime. They sit at the table and never put away the tea-things. They just keep moving to a new seat and another tea set; a new seat and another tea set; a new seat and another tea set. This is not so different from the way many of us handle our relationships.
In the beginning of my relationship with my wife, Caryn, I expected it to be like other relationships I’d had. Caryn is