Early Morning Reflection on Awakening

There is obviously a pun of sorts in the title for this briefest reflection.

Is “awakening” or “enlightenment” really like waking from sleep? In some ways, I think it is. But, the metaphor can be misleading, as well, if we cling to the image as the reality. For many this metaphor suggests being awake is categorically different than our ordinary lives. So, if one is awake one shouldn’t feel inappropriate feelings, or act upon them. One shouldn’t feel lust, for instance. Or, even, sometimes people think, even be grumpy. In short, if you’re awake your poop don’t stink. Actually, according to some you shouldn’t even have to poop. (If this were a talk in a Zen center, obviously I wouldn’t be using the word “poop.” That’s another hint for us, I suggest…)

One of the reasons I was first drawn to the Zen way, and why I continue to practice Zen within a largely Unitarian Universalist context is that it assumes this place, right here, right now is actually “it.” Awakening. Heaven. The Pure Land.

A couple of blog entries ago I quoted my friend the Zen teacher Elizabeth Hamilton. One commentator took me to task for citing her as the reader appeared to feel the relatively recent break with her teacher was proof of some inadequacy in one of the teachers or of the teaching itself. I agree we need to notice what people do (back to that real world thing, right here, right now). But the seduction can be that if the teacher isn’t up to snuff in some real or imagined way, then they aren’t a real teacher, or rather more dangerously, the teaching can’t be true. That, I want to challenge…

Let’s come back to the assertion the real, the true, the awakened life, is right here.

My observation is that if one has followed the path and has passed through those various moments that people call “kensho” and integrated these experiences and over time has been dubbed by a teacher as “awakened,” what you get is not a whole lot different than what you see anywhere else. Someone who is a jerk and follows the path and wakes up becomes an enlightened jerk.

Or so it seems to me.

For me part of the problem is that we expect something special here. The language itself suggests something special. It’s really hard to get: “It” is right here.

This moment.

Here.

Now.

Unveiled.

Without lies.

And it includes everything, the good and the ill, without exception.

(I think of the Biblical story of Jonah, a first class shirker, who nonetheless is picked by God to be a prophet. And when he, finally, finally goes and does the prophecying, and the people repent, he’s pissed that they did and didn’t get divine punishment. Totally unworthy. And totally God’s prophet….)

But wait, as the commercial says, there’s more:

From here, that is right here, from the unveiled experience of this moment I do believe we need to take on some disciplines that make us and the world a little better. I think we do need to cultivate kindness. I even believe we should be socially active, engaged in the mess of the world. These are not awakening, although I find them the fruit of awakening, and an important next step on the Bodhisattva way.

But those steps are in some real ways addressing different questions than the first one of what is awakening. They interact with that awakening to what I’d call our experience of the nondual reality. And these other things are very, very important. That’s one reason I’m involved actively in the UU church. It calls me to a rather more comprehensive set of accountabilities than we usually find in Zen centers which are still casting about for their place in the West. I think this is important enough that I’ve given a very big part of my life to the Unitarian Universalist way and particularly to the disciplines of its ordained ministry.

This possibility exists within ordinary Buddhism, as well. It just hasn’t been developed as much there, here, yet.

In classic Buddhist formations the way has three parts: nondual insight or wisdom, insight disciplines or meditation and the practice of a harmonious life, morality or ethics. The weakness of Zen in the West so far, which of course has also been its strength at first, is how it has first and relentlessly presented meditation disciplines and with that nondual insight.

The importance of the harmonious life has not really, to my mind, been attended to much, nor taken root much yet. And I think there has been unnecessary hurt because of this. After the amazing number of sex scandals in the Western Zen communities the has been some attention to codes of ethics regarding teacher/student relationships. And that’s a good thing. But this way of harmonious relationship is still far from being deeply explored as the integral part of a holistic path that it really is. In the Zen world there still are only four or five books on the subject. That speaks volumes, as it were. But the bigger and perhaps more boring issues around institutions are also not developed. Zen is still a lot of wildcatting. If I don’t like my teacher, as a teacher, I can walk. If he doesn’t like me, he can toss me out of the organization. Our accountabilities are very personal, and while precious, are in some very important ways, just not enough. That’s where institutions come in, with all the complexities they bring. We lose some of the shamanistic quality but we also get larger nets of accountability and connection.

So Western Buddhism is far from a mature product. As it were.

And we do need to forthrightly attend to how we can integrate this call to a harmonious life within our sanghas, which it is true, are too easily ignored right now. But we don’t need to do it by denouncing those who have fallen short of what we think they should be on a path that doesn’t call for them being what we think… And, thankfully, the conversation is happening. Those who have walked the way for a long time are attending to this, both teachers and practitioners. I’m very much frustrated by it, and I’m enormously heartened by the formation of the Soto Zen Buddhist Association, a first tentative step toward a “denominational” structure…

And I see wonderful things taking shape, amidst the hurt and longing, something precious does appear to be presenting itself.

So, friends, if this way has called you, I hope you’ll hang in there, allow yourself to be hurt and remain vulnerable. It really seems something valuable is presenting itself. I’ve tasted it. I’ve failed. I’ve won. I’ve failed again.

And, my oh, my.

That’s when the real way reveals itself…