J. asks: I want to ask about non-dual practice in relation to “resistance.” It seems to me that mindfulness itself is inherently non-dual. Therefore, when we single out something that is a “problem” such as “resistance” and try to do away with it…haven’t we left zazen? (Or ego? Or mind?)
I ask it because many teachers seem to, to me anyway, paint resistance in a corner as a bad thing that must go…how can one really practice like this?
Kind Regards, J.
Dosho’s response: From my perspective, mindfulness is inherently dualistic because with mindfulness there is a subject viewing an object. Maybe you mean something different by that word. As the mind settles more and more in zazen, it can be seen how subtle the dualistic mind is. Every moment of awareness seems to be tangled in I and thou. A mind being not-quite-full of something.
Here’s Rilke (one Katagiri-roshi’s favorite poets) framing the issue:
We never have pure space in front of us,
not for a single day, such as flowers open
endlessly into. Always there is world,
and never the Nowhere without the Not: the pure,
unwatched-over, that one breathes and
endlessly knows, without craving. As a child
loses itself sometimes, one with the stillness, and
is jolted back. Or someone dies and is it.
Since near to death one no longer sees death,
and stares ahead, perhaps with the large gaze of the creature.
Lovers are close to it, in wonder, if
the other were not always there closing off the view…..
As if through an oversight it opens out
behind the other……But there is no
way past it, and it turns to world again.
Always turned towards creation, we see
only a mirroring of freedom
dimmed by us. Or that an animal
mutely, calmly is looking through and through us.
This is what fate means: to be opposite,
and to be that and nothing else, opposite, forever.