{"id":28744,"date":"2021-07-02T11:55:12","date_gmt":"2021-07-02T18:55:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/monkeymind\/?p=28744"},"modified":"2021-07-02T12:00:31","modified_gmt":"2021-07-02T19:00:31","slug":"entering-the-intimate-way-a-smallest-meditation-on-beginning-a-zen-practice-why-how","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/monkeymind\/2021\/07\/entering-the-intimate-way-a-smallest-meditation-on-beginning-a-zen-practice-why-how.html","title":{"rendered":"Entering the Intimate Way: A Smallest Meditation on Beginning a Zen Practice, Why & How"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

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Entering the Intimate Way<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

James Ishmael Ford<\/p>\n

By what are you saved?And how?
\nSaved like a bit of string,
\ntucked away in a drawer?
\nSaved like a child rushed from
\na burning building, already
\nsinged and coughing smoke?
\nOr are you salvaged
\nlike a car part\u2014the one good door
\nwhen the rest is wrecked?<\/em><\/p>\n

Do you believe me when I say
\nyou are neither salvaged nor saved,
\nbut salved, anointed by gentle hands
\nwhere you are most tender?
\nHaven\u2019t you seen
\nthe way snow curls down
\nlike a fresh sheet, how it
\ncovers everything, makes everything
\nbeautiful, without exception?<\/em><\/p>\n

Lynn Ungar<\/a>, \u201cBlessing the Bread\u201d<\/p>\n

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For a number of years when I\u2019d lead introductions to Zen and Zen meditation classes, I would say there are any number of reasons find themselves interested. Some had heard meditation was good for one\u2019s health. In a similar vein, people were wracked with anxiety, and again, heard that meditation could lower one\u2019s blood pressure.<\/p>\n

I\u2019d then say that while it\u2019s true that meditation, including Zen\u2019s specific kind of meditation is associated with some physiological shifts, including lowering blood pressure, that a simple cost benefit analysis would suggest this wasn\u2019t the smartest way to go. You could achieve similar results to a half hour of meditation by watching an episode of \u201cI Love Lucy.\u201d And, frankly, it would be more fun to watch Lucy Ricardo and Harpo Marx mirroring each other. Heck, there could even be a Zen teaching somewhere along the line. All without the sore knees.<\/p>\n

My point was that this didn\u2019t bring enough motivation to the project. Zen is hard. Or, as the Korean Zen master Seung Sahn once said in a talk I attended, \u201cZen is boring.\u201d Hard. Boring. Sore knees. Sore backs. When we\u2019re looking to feel a little better, perhaps Zen isn\u2019t the best thing going.<\/p>\n

But, in recent years, I\u2019ve stopped with that aside.<\/p>\n

For one thing, I\u2019ve noticed no one has a \u201cgood reason.\u201d Our motives for taking up any spiritual practice are clouded. I know more than one person who converted to Christianity as part of a deal. In some desperate moment or another they cried out to God that if their fat were pulled out of this particular fire, they would henceforth embrace the Christian way. Should they extricate themselves or get extricated, the vast majority would quickly renege.<\/p>\n

Many years ago my brother and I took a hike in the mountains above Palm Springs. We met some other hikers and at dusk we set out our sleeping bags near each other. \u00a0And all of us shared cheese and bread and some fruit we\u2019d packed in with us.<\/p>\n

Then in the middle of the night it started raining. It quickly became dangerous. We all scampered up the side of the gully and no sooner were we as high as we were going to be able to get we could hear the water rushing down. It was terrifying. Our companions being to cry out to God to save them. One loudly promised to change and to become God fearing if he were saved.<\/p>\n

The truth is I have no idea what came next for him. Most likely, given my observation of humans, is that by the next morning he\u2019d completely forgotten his prayer.\u00a0But for some, and I\u2019ve met them, as well, that promise is kept. They have continued on. Some for a lifetime.<\/p>\n

What I began to notice was that it wasn\u2019t the motivation specifically. Well, other than that most fundamental of all our motivations for spirituality or religion. Noticing that there\u2019s something wrong.\u00a0We can see that wrong is a hundred different ways. The wrong, in fact, seems specifically cut for each of us. Guilt and shame, each a variation on a sense of not fitting, of not belonging range large in the hearts of people who choose to take on the way.<\/p>\n

When I was thinking about entering a Zen monastery I asked the abbot how much faith did this whole thing require? I was told only the thought that possibly, maybe, something good could come of doing this. I was, and perhaps, I remain one of those of little faith.<\/p>\n

But, what really drove me was some desperation. Some feeling things were not right.<\/p>\n

And, however we frame it, that feeling that something\u2019s not right is the nugget that starts us on the way. Your problem, your sense. My problem, my sense. There is no right or wrong in our choice of name, what it is we notice specifically in our lives. Rather it is a feeling there\u2019s something wrong in the world, or, perhaps, it\u2019s something wrong in my heart \u2013 which is the beginning of the beginning.<\/p>\n

And immediately with that sense of wrong, there is a sense there is a right. We almost certainly can\u2019t put a word to what the right is. Only that with a wrong, a right should, or at least might be able to follow. Call it a hunch.\u00a0And with that a seed. In the Buddhism<\/a> of the Great Way, the Mahayana, this sense, this hunch is called Bodhicitta. In Sanskrit Bodhi means \u201cawakening\u201d and Citta means \u201cthat which is conscious.\u201d Bodhicitta is usually translated as the mind of awakening.<\/p>\n

Here is the most natural of all natural experiences. In the midst of our suffering, our longing, our desperation, we capture a glimpse. Or, really, something touches us.<\/p>\n

And with that, if we are lucky, and really notice some movement of some spirit within us, we turn our attention to the intimate way.\u00a0It is with this that I think of those who in the midst of some terrible fix call out to God, and make a promise. I think of that promise that people sometimes make in the heat of disaster. They call on God. They call on Quanyin. The call on Mother Mary.\u00a0They call on their own mother.<\/p>\n

They. We. Us. You. Me.<\/p>\n

And in that crying out, sometimes a promise is made.<\/p>\n

In my older years I find myself interested in the Pure Land. The myth of it has Amida, a Buddha from a place far away from our time and place who makes a vow to save all beings. Within the Pure Land, by putting your trust in Amida\u2019s vow, you are brought to a place where awakening is easy. Some would say that place given by another and the place achieved by the hard work of Zen practice is the same.<\/p>\n

But the critical point, as I see it, is in fact the vow itself.<\/p>\n

It is noticing something is wrong, feeling there can be a right, and making a promise to pursue that right.<\/p>\n

We call it the original vow in the Zen way.\u00a0In the Zen schools that vow is usually framed with four parts.<\/p>\n

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In the standard translation of the Sotoshu the four vows are:<\/p>\n

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Living beings are limitless; I vow to deliver them.<\/em><\/p>\n

Mental afflictions are inexhaustible: I vow to cut them off.<\/em><\/p>\n

Dharma gates are incalculable; I vow to practice them.<\/em><\/p>\n

The buddha way is unsurpassed; I vow to attain it.<\/em><\/p>\n

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In the Boundless Way and Empty Moon Zen communities we say:<\/p>\n

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Beings are numberless, I vow to free them;<\/em><\/p>\n

Delusions are inexhaustible, I vow to end them;<\/em><\/p>\n

Dharma gates are boundless, I vow to enter them;<\/em><\/p>\n

The Buddha Way is unsurpassable, I vow to embody it.<\/em><\/p>\n

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The Pacific Zen Institute offer another version, that I really love.<\/p>\n

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I vow to wake the beings of the world.<\/em><\/p>\n

I vow to set endless heartache to rest<\/em><\/p>\n

I vow to walk through every wisdom gate<\/em><\/p>\n

I vow to live the great Buddha way.<\/em><\/p>\n

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And the poets Allen Ginsberg, Gary Snyder, and Philip Whalen offered another version, connecting us to the natural world as the most intimate of intimate.<\/p>\n

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Sentient beings are numberless; I vow to save them.<\/em><\/p>\n

Consuming desires are endless; I vow to stop them.<\/em><\/p>\n

Bio-relations are intricate; I vow to honor them.<\/em><\/p>\n

Nature\u2019s way is beautiful; I vow to become it.<\/em><\/p>\n

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Each of these versions, I believe, capture the essential elements of that primordial, primary vow. To notice there is hurt. To notice I am caught up with others. To desire to bring healing to the matter. And to begin and end knowing this is a family matter.<\/p>\n

With this noticing, and this promise made to ourselves and on behalf of the whole hurting world, that is when we discover we\u2019ve entered the intimate way.<\/p>\n

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