What Practice Is
Excerpts From “Everyday Zen”
by Charlotte Joko Beck
Our daily life is in constant movement: lots of things going on, lots of people talking, lots of events taking place. In the middle of that, it’s very difficult to sense what we are in our life.
When we simplify the situation, when we take away the externals and remove ourselves from the ringing phone, the television, the people who visit us, the dog who needs a walk, we get a chance- which is absolutely the most valuable thing there is- to face ourselves. Meditation is not about some state, but about the meditator. It’s not about some activity, or about fixing something, or accomplishing something. It’s about ourselves….
When I say meditation is about the meditator, I do not mean that we engage in self-analysis. That’s not it either. So what do we do? Once we have assumed our best posture (which should be balanced, easy), we just sit there, we do zazen.
What do I mean by “just sit there”? It’s the most demanding of all activities. Usually in meditation we don’t shut our eyes. But right now I’d like you to shut your eyes and just sit there.
What’s going on? All sorts of things. A tiny twitch in your left shoulder; a pressure in your side… Notice your face for a moment. Feel it. Is it tense anywhere? Around the mouth, around the forehead? Now move down a bit. Notice your neck, just feel it. Then your shoulders, your back, chest, abdominal area, your arms, thighs. Keep feeling whatever you find. And feel your breath as it comes and goes. Don’t try to control it, just feel it. Our first instinct is to try to control the breath. Just let your breath be as it is. It may be high in your chest, it may be in the middle, it may be low. It may feel tense. Just experience it as it is. Now just feel all of that. If a car goes by outside, hear it. If a plane flies over, notice that. You might hear a refrigerator going on and off. Just be that.
That’s all you have to do, absolutely all you have to do: experience that, and just stay with it….
Usually, after about a minute, we begin to think. Our interest in just being with reality (which is what we have just done) is very low…. No, we want to think. We want to worry through all of our preoccupations. We want to figure life out.
When we make a personal investment in our thoughts we create the “I” and then our life begins not to work. That’s why we label our thoughts, to take the investment out again.
When we’ve been sitting long enough we can see our thoughts as just pure sensory input. And we can see ourselves moving through the stages preliminary to that: at first we feel our thoughts are real, and out of that we create the self-centered emotions, and out of that we create the barrier to seeing life as it is, because if we are caught in self-centered emotions we can’t see people or situations clearly. A thought in itself is just pure sensory input, an energy fragment. But we fear to see thoughts as they are.
When we label a thought we step back from it, we remove our identification. There’s a world of difference between saying, “She’s impossible” and “Having a thought that she’s impossible.” If we persistently label any thought the emotional overlay begins to drop out and we are left with an impersonal energy fragment to which we need not attach. But if we think our thoughts are real we act out of them. And if we act from such thoughts our life is muddled. Again, practice is to work with this until we know it in our bones.
Practice is not about achieving a realization in our heads. It has to be our flesh, our bones, ourself. Of course, we have to have life-centered thoughts; how to follow a recipe, how to put on a roof, how to plan our vacation. But we don’t need the emotionally self-centered activity that we call thinking. It really isn’t thinking, it’s an aberration of thinking.
Zen is about an active life, an involved life. When we know our minds well and the emotions that our thinking creates, we tend to see better what our lives are about and what needs to be done, which is generally just the next task under our nose. Zen is about a life of action, not a life of passively doing nothing. But our action must be based in reality. When our actions are based on our false thought systems (which are based on our conditioning), they are poorly based. When we have seen through the thought systems we can see what needs to be done.
Excepts from Everyday Zen
by Charlotte Joko Beck