Wherever we are, whatever is going on, attention can move effortlessly around breathing, thought, sensation, the immediate surroundings, and so on. This integrated functioning is not special and is not a skill acquired through a technique, something to switch on or off. It’s the functioning wisdom of our real nature.
We have probably become accustomed to being dispersed, distracted, obsessively caught up in parts of ourselves, so to be established in life like this can easily seem distant and unobtainable. Small wonder that it requires effort to turn around from formations we have become used to depending on. Identifying with these formations strengthens the impression that they are engrained and likely there’s an insistent perception that they are unquestionably who and what we are and so must be acted upon. Yet it only requires small momentary efforts to turn around from being driven and immediately enter the ease of basic experience. To realize a natural wisdom of being may seem paradoxical from the outside, though in practice it isn’t. Habit formations are only being momentarily created and have no solid foundation.
“Someone who sees the way, practices the way”. Though the seeming necessity to remain driven repeatedly asserts itself, once we have glimpsed that freedom from repetitive grooves is possible, it’s hard to ignore that it’s something we are doing that keeps suffering in the driving seat. Investing in holding ourselves apart is significant in driving that something, and this can be difficult to see at times.
The impulses to project ourselves outwardly onto the world creates the impression that acting on these impulses has an essential utility, perhaps tied-up with maintaining a sense of meaning, purpose and security. The values and justifications we attribute to our actions and the actions themselves may not be simply wrong or right. In terms of realizing original enlightenment though, they are traps as they are being seen as externals, encouraging the delusion that something is missing and that fulfilment lies somewhere else in place and time, even if ever so slightly.
Loosely speaking, the things that grab our attention and seem to insist on their existence, appear quite coarse, tangible and weighty. While freedom of mind and heart, though ever present, is quiet, subtle and weightless. It’s easy to believe original wisdom to be nothing and treat it as such because the senses cannot grasp it. The teachings of reality don’t insist or ever give up though. It could be that the universe’s functioning is essentially compassionate in disturbing our delusion that the senses can be used to grasp or block anything. Though of course, we don’t always see that way.
In establishing immersive life in simply being present, awareness allows attention to move where it needs to without deliberation. This makes possible an ease in a rounded openness that undermines the seeming solidity of separation along with the poignant irony of fearing the loss of burdens and hindrances. When we are getting ourselves out of the way, eyes, ears, nose, tongue and mind illuminate original trustworthy functioning, allowing it to flourish and human attributes to kaleidoscope. It becomes clearer that we and others are not locked away inside a skin bag of bone and muscle and we are not divided within ourselves either. We are individual, have agency and, “enlightenment does not divide you …. you cannot hinder enlightenment”. Spiritual practice is clearly not based in survival but connection. We are not ‘inside’ and the world is not, ‘out there’ and this is true for others, even if we aren’t realizing it at times. Life is not an endless dodgem ride of chasing, avoiding, colliding, unless we are making it so.
Awareness in the form of seated meditation illuminates a direct and accessible liberation that can take effect throughout life’s activities through actualized letting go. This becomes true when all that we are is being included, the physical as well as the mental. Avoiding zazen is avoiding aspects of life in some way. This isn’t to say that everyone should practice formal sitting meditation, just that avoidance is avoidance and this can be hard to see. Addiction to the form of sitting would also be avoidance based in ignorance. Steadfast immersion in experience enables many qualities to be active including a stable and alive softness, the strength of a responsive wisdom that comes with letting go of seeking security and resisting what comes to us.
This is what practice is, attention in where our life is taking place, because this is where enlightenment is. The limits of the ‘fully’ in ‘being fully present’ can never be reached and the exertion that comes forth as a result is not our own creation. It could be described as, throughout the 24hrs there isn’t a second person, and relying on this attentively and continuously. This differs from mindfulness as it is commonly understood, a deliberate practice such as focus on an object for example, an idea of ‘the present moment’. Zazen includes elements of mindfulness but is focused immersion in objectless presence, “The mind and it’s object are one. The gateway to enlightenment stands open wide”.
In diligently letting of yourself and experiencing the result, experience is no longer an idea. The subtle emancipating effects of attentive immersion cannot take hold if our effort and consistency in applying ourselves is sporadic or half-hearted, naturally enough there needs to be some diligence. In the moments when we are prioritizing our imagined self (the second person) and it’s needs, there is no practice in experience and so no illumination of assumptions. We are only creating the conditions for an imagined separation to get stronger and for problems to accrue. There must be at least millions of opportunities in a day to harmonize body and mind with the way of all things. Taking the opportunities offered is an endless sensitive work, one that we can warm to while being warmed in a quiet appreciative joy of being, finding a confidence and ease whether we are enjoying pleasure or suffering pain. It isn’t a shortcoming that effort is necessary, everything is making effort in exerting itself, its the nature of things, it’s essentially joyful and as Dogen says somewhere, it’s “effort without desire”.
All quotes are from Zen Master Dogen. The first is from ‘Bendowa’ (On the Endeavour of the Way); the second is from ‘Genjokoan’, (Actualizing the Fundamental Point); the third, from his commentary on the Bodhisattva Precepts, specifically, ‘Do not Steal’. Various translations used.