What do I get?
‘And what is blind ignorance? All wordly beings from time immemorial have matters turned around in a variety of ways so that they keep returning to the same place, just as anyone does who is lost and wanders off in all directions. They mistakenly perceive the four elements to be properties of their own bodies and the shadows that flit across the fields of their six senses to be properties of their own minds.’
They’re you go, enough said, get to it!
The excerpt is from, The Fully Perfected Enlightenment Scripture* (aka, The Great Far-Reaching Scripture Which Reveals The Whole Meaning of the Buddha’s Teaching on Fully Perfected Enlightenment** – phew!), a lengthy piece of writing full of detailed descriptions of what it means to be stuck and what it means to be getting free of being stuck.
This, ‘keep returning to the same place’, has countless changing appearances, some of which, and the complexities of the elements involved in making them up, are probably not obvious, even to ourselves. Often private, insistent, intimate, inescapable, much like what keeps you awake on a night can only be yours, and yours alone, to face. The little things that tend to keep tripping us up, the misperceived parts of ourselves that we repeatedly make a problem out of rather than face completely. In simply turning yourself around and facing what is there, the problematic relating dissolves and there is nothing to see any more, as clearly, nothing is ever hidden from you.
The way of zazen is full bloodied, immediately including and vitalizing all of you, exactly as you are. In oneness of body and mind, the detail, the complexity of you, is disentangled from itself. Zazen is not a mental exercise, the body must be allowed to participate and fully play its part too, only then are both fully exerted and finally, at last, both body and mind have nothing to do. Liberation only asks for all of us – and this we have to discover for ourselves – although it may be the last thing we want to do, it’s really not a big deal to let go of ourselves. In return, we have the universe to stretch ourselves out in. While excluding awareness, we hesitate, drift, fester and frustrate on the edges of zazen. Awareness reveals that we are unknowingly withholding parts of ourselves, misusing mind to manipulate body and control experience. Unquestioned habitual fabricating makes body and mind a troublesome burden. Rather than give that burden up, habit propels the making of it heavier still, putting off true freedom in delaying surrender. Repeatedly choosing the confining comfort of the familiar over the vastness of ungraspable existence, is not bad, but it is unfortunate. Stubbornness is not a virtue of wisdom, at least as far as I can tell.
Simply put, the basic mistake being pointed to, so directly in the quoted excerpt, is the attempt to use this body and mind to keep an imagined self, happy and safe. This is not just an ultimately futile endeavour, it’s also one that instantly casts an uneasy shadow over life. When understanding this error, you are understanding the insidiously endless nature of it and what is involved in getting free of it – the necessity to engage body and mind completely, to give yourself without worrying, ‘what’s in it for me?’.
The illusory, fabricated self, cannot be used to comprehend that we always have both everything, and nothing, at every moment. If you want to win the lottery, you start by buying a ticket. Zazen is like joining a lottery that you cannot lose. You can’t know this however, until you buy the ticket.
* ** Buddhist Writings, trans. Rev. Hubert Nearman, published by Shasta Abbey 1994. Other translations are available.
Willard Lee 02/01/2024